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BT 1101 .B78 1900 


Bruce, Alexander Balmai 
1831-1899, 


Apologetics 


n, 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/apologeticsorchrOObruc_0O 


s 


INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. 


APOLOGETICS; 


OR, 


CHRISTIANITY DEFENSIVELY STATED. 


BY 


ALEXANDER BALMAIN BRUCE, DD, 


PROFESSOR OF 
APOLOGETICS AND NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS, FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW} 
AUTHOR OF 
‘tHE TRAINING OF THE TWELVE,” ‘‘THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST,” 
“THE KINGDOM OF GOD,” ETO. 


SIXTH EDITION 


NEW YORK: 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. 


1900 


COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. 


$e Carton (press — 
171, 173 Macdougal Street, New York 


PREFACE, 


hee 


Tue conception of the nature and function of Apologetics 
which dominates this work is fully explained in the second 
chapter of the Introduction. It will suffice here to say 
that what is now offered to the public is not an abstract 
treatise on Apologetics in which all the traditional common- 
places of the subject—The Theistic Argument, Revelation, 
Inspiration, Miracles, Prophecy, The Canon, etc.—are dis- 
cussed, without reference to present needs and trials of 
faith. It is an apologetic presentation of the Christian 
faith with reference to whatever in our intellectual environ- 
ment makes faith difficult at the present time. The con- 
stituency to which it addresses itself consists neither of 
dogmatic believers for whose satisfaction it seeks to show 
how triumphantly their faith can at all possible points of 
assault be defended, nor of dogmatic unbelievers whom it 
strives to convince or confound, but of men whose sympa- 
thies are with Christianity, but whose faith is “stifled or 
weakened by anti-Christian prejudices of varied nature and 
origin.” The aim dictates the method. It leads to the 
selection of topics of pressing concern, burning questions ; 
leaving on one side, or throwing into the background, 


subjects which formerly occupied the foreground in apolo- 
v 


vl PREFACE. 


getic treatises. Such omissions may disappoint those who 
are familiar with the older apologetic literature, but it is 
hoped that what is here offered as an aid to faith will meet 
the wants of those for whose benefit it is designed, and in 
so doing be in sympathy with the aim of the projectors of 
the INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. 


A. B. BRUCE. 
GLascow, November 1892, 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION. 


CHAPTER I. 


HISTORICAL SKETCH. 


SEC. 


I. The Apologetic Elements in the New Testament, 
Il. The Attack of Celsus and the Reply of Origen, 


—+4— 


Ill. Free Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 


IV. Free Thought in the Present Time, 


CHAPTER II. 


THE FUNCTIONS AND METHOD OF APOLOGETIC. 


Apology and Apologetic, 


The idea of Apologetic variously conceived, 


Place of Apologetic in a theological curriculum, 


Author’s idea of the function of Apologetic, 
Method of Apologetic—Chalmers, Baumstar 


Method of this work, . : 


BOOK I. 


k, Delitzsch, Elvard, 


THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE, CHRISTIAN AND ANTI-CHRISTIAN. 


CHAPTER I. 
THE CHRISTIAN FACTS. 


Christ’s love to the sinful the fundamental fact, 


Christ’s works of healing, 
Christ’s idea of God and of man, 
Jesus an exceptional Person, 
Jesus the Christ, : A 
Christ’s doctrine of the kingdom, 
Christ’s conflict with Pharisaism, 
Christ’s doctrine of sin, 


vii 


eae 


Vl CONTENTS, 


CHAPTER II. 


THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE, 


PAGE 
Extracted from the Christian facts, . ‘ y 5 : 59 
God an Ethical Personality, . : . a ‘ . 59 
Man’s importance as God’s son, : : ° . . 59 
The Christian view of moral evil, A ‘ ¢ . ; 60 
Sin a reality, ; : : . 3 60 
Does not originate with God, . . ° . : ; 61 
Not a necessity, ; : : : ; ° . 61 
Bible account of the Fall, ; : ; j ‘ : 62 
Moral and physical evil how related, . : ° : : 63 
God the Creator of the world, . . : 4 : : 65 
God the Sustainer of the world, . ‘ : : 3 66 
The Christian Hope for the world, . . : ° A 67 
CHAPTER III. 
THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 
Spinoza’s view of the universe, : eens : cea! 
Hegel’s, " ; : ; “ ‘ A A 17 
Criticism of Pantheism, 5 . 5 A Z 79 
Its fascinations, 3 ; : : x : é 79 
Pantheistic view of Personality of God, ° 4 : . 80 
Of the creation of the world, . ; 4 : : A 84 
Moral aspects of Pantheism, , . ‘ ‘ ‘ : 87 
Religious aspect, ° . : ° . Oy ° 89 
CHAPTER IY. 
THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY, 

Materialism and modern science, - ‘ A ; ° 91 
The Materialistic theory explained, . é . : . 93 
Its relation to the problem of the origin of life, : - ° 94 
And to that of the origin of conscious life, , : . 96 
Cautious type of Materialism, . : : . ie : 98 
Materialism on its ethical side, . : ; ;. : 99 
Its attempt to find an objective basis of moral EV ete . eas t02 
The religious aspect of Materialism, : San 7 Poor fA 
Criticism of Materialism, : 3 ‘ ; ; a) AOS 

Christian attitude towards the problems of the origin of life and 
the existence of the soul, . m : , : Paes Sh 
Darwinism in morals, . . : . é AS i 
Worship of the universe, . ° ° . se oo tbs 


Worship of ideals, , : ° ’ ’ ’ > 1i4 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE DEISTIC THEORY. 


Deism contrasted with Pantheism and Materialism, . 


Four characteristics of Deism, - 
Deistic optimism, : : . : 
Deistic view of human nature, : ‘ 
View of the future life, ‘ . “ 
Criticism of the theory, : ° 
Deistic optimism extravagant, : : 


Butler’s Analogy of Benger. 

Modern pessimism : Mill and Src 

Kant’s view of moral evil, : f ° 
Silence of the Old Parent on fatere life, . 


CHAPTER VI. 


MODERN SPECULATIVE THEISM. 


Contrasted with Deism, ; 4 

Immanence and transcendence, : 
Immaneuce as conceived by Theodore Parker, 
Attitude of modern Theists towards prayer, . 

Views on providence and human destiny, 

Critivism of the theory, : ; 

In a state of unstable equilibrium, 

Unsatisfactory in a religious point of view, 

Does not satisfy the craving for certainty, . 
Buoyant tone of modern Theists, : : . 


CHAPTER VII. 


AGNOSTICISM. 
Herbert Spencer’s position, . é : ° 
Hostile to Christian interests, iy tied 
Agnosticism may seem justified by he contradietions of Theists, 
Theistic proofs, : . 
The Cosmological argument, . : 
The Teleological argument, . 3 . . 
The Ontological argument, . . > . 
Modern lines of evidence, ; . . vars 


Significance of this conflict of opinion, 
Not that God is, but what God is, to be insisted on, . 


The Christian idea of God a hy pothesis which all we know tends to verify, 


Process of verification sketched, : Z 3 
Man the basis of the Theistic argument, 5 i 
Agnostic religions, . F , , . 


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x CONTENTS, 


BOOK II. 


THE HISTORICAL PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY, 


CHAPTER I. 
THE SOURCES, 

PAGE 
The Hebrew Scriptures, : : . ° 165 
History of Redemption as drawn from hese peter modern criticism arose, 165 
Effect of criticism on this view, . ; : ‘ . 166 
Critical account of the literatur @, : 3 , a 167 
‘‘Law and Prophets” becomes *‘ Pr ophets aid Law,” . ; 169 
The Hagiographa, , ‘ : : ‘ ° ° 170 
Attitude of apologist towards criticism, ° . ° . 171 
Begin our study with the Prophets, . ; . . . 173 
Our plan, > ° : ‘ . ° . ° 174 

CHAPTER II. 
THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHETS, 
The Prophets of eighth and seventh centuries Monotheists, , = 176 
Jehovah supreme over the nations, . : . A ° 178 
Creator and Sustainer of the world, ; : ° 178 
Righteous Governor over all (ine : ; : : : 180 
Election of Israel confirms this idea of God, ‘ A ; 182 
The Holy One of Israel ( (Isaiah), : ° c : F 183 
Inviolability of Zion (Isaiah), : . . , . 184 
Denied by Jeremiah, . , ; ° . ; ° 186 
Individualism and Unigorsiien, ; : ; Spun eee ae OM 
Whence came the religion of the Prophets? . ° NE “ 190 
CHAPTER III. 

THE PROPHETIC IDEA OF ISRAEL’S VOCATION AND HISTORY. 
Prophets viewed Israel as an elect people, , cichicve ate 192 
Elect for a purpose, , ° ° 194 
Israel the bearer to the world of the tr 1e mals 101, “6 J ° 195 
Prophetic references to Israel’s es history, . ° ° . 195 
Verify the election of Israel, ‘ ; : : ‘ 196 
Abraham’s call, : ‘ ; 3 s 198 
Geographical position of Tael, e : : : ° 200 
Principle of election creates an apologetic problem with reference to 

heathen world, x A % di : : 201 
Modern views of ethnis religions, —, ° eRe) 
Are these views reconcilable with the election of Isr elt . 204 
The true idea of that election, and inferences from it, ; 205 


Gods care was for the interests of the true religion, 10i for: a pet people, 207 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER IV. 


MOSAISM. 


Each stage in Israel’s religion connected with a providential crisis, . 


The Decalogue the great Mosaic monument, . : , . 
Proofs of Mosaicity of Decalogue, . . : . ° 
Original form of Decalogue, . : . ° wt Las 
Religious significance of Decalogue, . ° . ° ’ 
Compared with Egyptian ritual of the dead, . ° ° . 
Mosaism and Judaism contrasted, . : ° : . 


Relation of Moses to Levitical ritual, 4 
The Jehovah of the Decalogue and the Baal of Pagan Semitic “Mains 


contrasted, : ‘ : ° . . 

Mosaism and the state after sears : : ° ‘ . 
CHAPTER V. 
PROPHETISM. 

Sketch of history from Moses to 800 B.c., —- : " = 
The Jehovah of Elijah (image-worship), , : : 5 
The Prophets reaffirmers of Mosaism with now emphasis: resemblances 

and coutrasts, . . : Pere a 
The Prophets moral critics of lei en 5 § : a 
Their passion for righteousness, : . . . . 
Their faith in an objective moral ord, ° . . ° 
Placed morality above ritual, . ° . . nas ° 
Prophetic moral ideal eee - ; ° ° ° 
Trials of their faith, . ; ° ° Re 
Apologetic value of Hebrew ane shee y : ve : 
Prophetic oracles compared with utterances of ea sages, » ° 


CHAPTER | VI. 
PROPHETIC OPTIMISM. 


Combination of passion for righteousness with a hopeful spirit rare, . 


The-source of prophetic optimism, . : : : ‘ 
Sprang out of faith in election of Israel, : a reet ee 
Ultimately out of prophetic idea of God (grace), ; 5 


The expression of prophetic hope, 


Various types of the ideal future (Isaiah, Jer oan raha a the Exil @), 


The value of prophetic optimism, . . : ° ° 
The Ideal Royal Man, othe ieee ; . ° ° 
The kingdom of the good, . ° ° . ° ’ 
The suffering servant of God, . ’ ‘ fH . ° 


These three ideals met in Jesus, ; Arian ae ’ ’ 


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Xl CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER VII. 


JUDAISM, 
From Prophetism to Judaism a great descent, : : e 
Could God have any hand in Judaism ? . ‘ : 
It had a good, beneficent side, : : . . . 
Literary activity of the exiles, : : . e : 
Religious value of the Levitical Code, ‘ : ‘ : 
Evil latent in Judaism, : A . ° . 
Remained for a time an undeveloped eet ‘ ‘ . 


The Psalter a proof of this, : 

How critical views of the late origin of fie law affect New Testa- 
ment verdicts, . ; 5 : ‘ . 

Two legal experiments, ° ° : : . ° 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM, 


This period pla fake of the light of aie aa : . . 
The Seribes, . . : . ° 
Their work, . ‘ 4 A : . : ° 
Persian influence, ; ° . : 
Sectarian acon (Pharisees el Saddueresy: : . 

Greek influence, Maccabean revolt, . 5 . . ‘ 
The Book of Daniel, . : ; ° 4 . ‘ 
Apocalyptic literature, : . : : . ° 
The Diaspora, : ° % ‘ A ; : 
The Septuagint, : : : . : . Z 
Philo and Hellenism, . “ ° : ° e ° 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 


Revelation and the Bible not synonyms, A : . . 
Utility of a Bible, , oe 

Whence arising, 

Perfection and : infallibility, : . : ‘ 
Minimum requirements of the Bible’s funetion, : : 
Religious value of Old Testament, how atiected by riticism,. 
Canon of Old Testament, 

Reflections suggested by history of Ginen: 

That history involved in deep obscurity, ‘ ° . 
Historical details respecting Old Testament Canon, . 
Test of canonicity, aA 


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CONTENTS. xi 


CHAPTER X. 
THE DEFECTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION AND ITS LITERATURE. 

PAGE 
The Canon an open question yet practically closed, . . ‘ 321 
Old Testament to be read with discrimination, ; : ‘ 323 
‘Rule of faith and practice,”. ‘ ; . . ; 324 
Defects of Old Testament religion, . . 5 : ; 326 
Querulousness, é : ; ° ° ; ; 327 
Vindictiveness, ‘ ; ° : . ; . 329 
Defects of post-exilic literature, : : ; 5 ae Bat 
Philo-Levitical spirit (Chronicles), . : ° ° A 331 
Exclusiveness towards foreigners, « ° ° ° ° 332 
Ruth and Jonah a protest against, . . ° ° ° 333 
Self-righteousness, . . ° ° ° ° ‘ 334 
These defects, how to be viewed, . ° ° ’ e 836 

BOOK III. 


THE CHRISTIAN ORIGINS. 


CHAPTER I. 
JESUS, 

Jesus welcome for His own sake, ; e ° Ps 4 $37 
Desire to know the historical Jesus, . ° ° ° e 338 
The way of Jesus with inquirers, : ° ° ° ° 339 
Fear of eternal loss hinders thoroughness in religion, ° e ° 84i 
Can Jesus really be known? . . . : ° : 342 
Presumptive evidence that it is possible, ‘ . ° ° 343 
Jesus introduced a new type of goodness, ° ° . 346 
His goodness contrasted with that of the Scribes, ° ° 347 
Present tendency to make Christianity independent of history, 

various forms of, . ¢ ° ° ° . x 351 
Criticism of, ° ° ° e ° 3 s ry 351-353 
Intuition, Dogma, Ide > ° ° ° ° » 854 

CHAPTER II. 
ZESUS AS THE CHRIST. 

Importance of the affirmation, : ° ° ° eer | 
Did Jesus claim to be the Christ, . . ° ° ° 858 
Outfit for the Christ, . atc . ° ° ° 358 
Baur’s view of the relation of Jesus to the Messianic idea, . ° 360 
Jesus not an opportunist Messiah, . ‘ : ° ° 361 
His Messianic idea transformed, . ° : , » 862 


XIV CONTENTS. 


Messianic consciousness inconsistent with humility (Martineau), . 


Criticism of this position, : : ° ; : ° 
Two helpful lines of thought, . : ° e : ° 
Jesus He that should come, . ‘ ° e ° ° 


CHAPTER III. 


JESUS AS FOUNDER OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD, 


The Kingdom the burden of Christ’s preaching, ; ‘ 
Jesus had to create both the Kingdom and the true idea of it, 
Christ’s idea of the Kingdom, : : A : ° 
Spirituality and universality, . . : . . ° 
A kingdom of grace, . . < . 
Mdina and methods of founding the Kingtom, Bad stake ‘ 
The miraculous element, . : . . . 
Relation of, to the primitive gospel, . : . . oa 
p to Christ’s character ana vocation, ° . ° 
Permanent significance of, . ° : : . . 
Choice of the twelve, its significance, . . . . 
Jesus did more by His death than by His nee ° . . 
Christ’s teaching concerning His death, . : * : 
The gospel narratives of the Passion, . e ° ° ° 


CHAPTER IV. 


JESUS RISEN, 


Modern views as to importance of Christ’s resurrection, 2 a 
Five theories for explaining away the resurrection, . : 

The theft theory (Reimarus), . ° . . ° ° 
The swoon theory (Schleiermacher), . ° ° ° ° 
The vision theory (Renan, Strauss), . : ° ° ° 
The telegram theory (Keim), . . . ° 
No Christophanies to account for (Martincant, ° . ° 
The physical resurrection remains, but a mystery, « ° ° 


CHAPTER V. 
JESUS LORD. 


Jesus has for the Christian consciousness the religious value of God, 


Sources of faith in Jesus as divine, . : . a 5 
The holiness of Jesus, ° ° ° ° ° ° 
The death of Jesus, . ° ° : ° . ° 
The resurrection, : : ° ; - ° : 
Paul on the resurrection, ° 


Theological reflection on Christ’s Person in Apostolic Church (Paul), 
The virgin birth, ° . ° ® 


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CONTENTS. 


Modern views on, ° ° ° 

Thoroughgoing Naturalism etnies the 4 life as well as the 
virgin birth, 

The miraculous possibility of liotzed: 

Evolution and a sinless man (Le Conte), ° ° ° ° 


CHAPTER VIL. 


PAUL. 
Importance of, to age ° ‘ . e ‘ 
Dr. Baur on, . ° ° ° ° a 
Makes too much of Pal) ‘ ° ° . . ° 
Yet Paul’s importance great, . . ° - d ‘ 
His conversion, : ° ° ° ° ° . 
Not without preparation, ° : . ° . ‘ 
Autobiographical hints, c : ° . . . 
Issues very radical, . ° ‘ : ; ° 
Elements of his Christian Pecigueness: : F : : 
Christ the centre, : . : ° ° ° 
Faith in Christ’s atoning dead , ‘ . : = 
Possible source of, : ° . ° ° ° 
Experience source of Paul’s theology, ° A ° ° 
His limitations, ° ‘ ‘ . 3 ° e 
Contrasted with Jesus, 3 ‘ F ; ° e 
Disparagement of Paul (Renan), ‘ ; ° : ; 


CHAPTER VII. 


PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 


Divergencies of view in Apostolic Church, . ; a = 
Theories as to primitive Christianity, ° . ° ° 
Theory of F. C. Baur, . . ° ° ° ° 

os Bernhard Weiss, . ° . ° ° ° 

+ Weizsicker,. ° ° ° ° ° e 

<5 Pfleiderer, . e ° ° ° . ° 
Criticism of these theories, . . ° ° ° ° 
Inferences from, ; ° ° : ° 
Applied to Epistle to the Fabre ° . ° . . 
To the Acts of the Apostles, ° r ) ° e e 
Pfleiderer’s new Tendenz-Kritik, ° ° e ° ° 


- CHAPTER VIII. 
THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS. 


The statements of Papias, . . ; ° ° ° 
How viewed by modern critics, ° ° . : . 


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Xvi CONTENTS. 


Pfleiderer’s view, . 

Baur and Pfleiderer on the Synoptical Guspels 
The so-called ‘‘Hymn of Victory,” 

Principles of sound criticism, . 

Luke’s aim as gathered from his per 
Inferences favourable to historicity of Synoptics, 
Yet the Evangelists not chroniclers, . 

Did they step out of the actual into the poeibIS 
The story of the sinful woman in Simon’s house, 
The great commission in Matt. xxviii. 16-20, 


CHAPTER IX, 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 


The hardest apologetic problem, ; 


The vital question at issue, . . ° 
Attitude towards Johannine authorship, 3 
The Logos idea, ° : : . 
Free treatment of history, . ; : 
And of Christ’s words, : 


How to be accounted for if John the sehen 
Attitude of apologist towards such questions, 
**Full of grace and truth,” 

Johannine miracles, . 


Teaching of Christ in, compared with Syuéptical See 


Lauded at the expense of the Synoptists, 
Logos theorem not the key to the gospel, . 
Apostolic authorship credible, : ° 


CHAPTER X. 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 


Christ the supreme authority in religion, . 
Christ and other masters, . : ° 
Christ and reason, . ° ° 
Christ and the Church, ° ° 
Christ and the Scriptures, . © 
The sphere of Christ’s authority, “ . 
Christianity the absolute religion, 


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INTRODUCTION. 


CHAPTER I 
HISTORICAL SKETCH. 


TuIs work may fitly begin with a brief statement on some 
outstanding topics connected with the history of Apologetics, 
by way of a popular indication of the general nature of the 
study with which we are to be occupied. 


Section I.— The Apologetic Elements in the New Testament. 


These have reference mainly to two topics: the Person 
of the Messiah, and the Nature of the Messianic Kingdom. 
As to the former: Jesus came without pomp, political 
power, or social prestige—* meek and lowly ” in state as 
well as “in heart”; born in poverty, reared amid mean 
conditions, and appearing in manhood among men utterly 
denuded of all that tends to secure influence and win the 
goodwill of those who take their inspiration from the pride 
of life. This was not the Christ such persons desired ; it 
was not such a Christ, they were persuaded, their sacred 
Books taught them to expect. The Christ of prophecy, the 
Christ of their hearts’ choice, was a personage who on His 
advent should be recognisable as a great One. Such being 
the Christ of expectation, the actual Christ, Jesus of 
Nazareth, was of course despised and rejected by His 
countrymen ; and on His persisting in giving solid evidence 
of His Messianic claims in His words and works, was even 

A 


2 APOLOGETICS. 


hated by them, till at length contradiction took the form 
of crucifixion, Then it came to pass that the injustice of 
one generation became a justification for the unbelief of 
the next. Because their fathers crucified Jesus, the Jews 
who were contemporaries of the apostles, and witnessed the 
founding of the Christian Church, found it difficult or 
impossible to accept Him as the Christ. Christ crucified 
became to the Jews a cxavéadrov. How could a crucified 
man be the fulfilment of Messianic prophecies, the realisa- 
tion of Old Testament ideals? It was a hard question 
even for believing Jews. Many Hebrew Christians found 
in the idea of a crucified Christ simply a stumbling- 
block. 

To this fact the Epistle to the Hebrews seems to have 
owed, at least in part, its origin. That remarkable writing 
is an elaborate apology for the Cross in a twofold aspect; 
first and chiefly, for the cross which Jesus bore, and second 
and subordinately for the cross that came to Christians in 
connection with their profession of faith in the Crucified 
One. It may be regarded as the most important contribu- 
tion to the apologetics of Christianity contained in the 
New Testament. It is indeed the one systematic effort of 
that sort. Very valuable apologetic ideas occur in Paul’s 
Epistles, such as that of the “fulness‘of the time”; but 
they are only occasional and undeveloped thoughts. In 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, on the other hand, we find a 
sustained attempt to meet in a comprehensive spirit the 
difficulties of the Christian faith as these presented them- 
selves to the minds of Hebrews, by setting forth Christ’s 
death, with all its foregoing and accompanying humiliation, 
as an experience which overtook Him in the pursuit of a 
high vocation, that of Captain of salvation; an act of self- 
sacrifice in virtue of which He realised the ideal of priest- 
hood whereof only the shadow was given in Leviticalism, 
and so inaugurated the eternal religion, the final, because 
perfect, form of man’s relation to God. 

Less obtrusive, but not less significant, are the apologetic 


INTRODUCTION. 8 


elements to be found in the sayings of Jesus. These, 
however, relate not to the humiliation-aspect of His own 
Person and earthly career, but rather to the nature of His 
mission. He took no great pains to remove stumbling- 
blocks to faith arising out of the former. He rather 
confessed than apologised for the meanness of His state 
and lot. He did not explain why the Son of man had not 
where to lay His head, but simply stated the fact for the 
information of would-be disciples. He seems indeed to 
have been desirous to increase rather than to diminish the 
offence of His lowliness, and to have used it as a means 
of protecting Himself from the patronising attachment of 
those in whose sincerity and stedfastness as disciples He 
had no confidence. To this cause in part may be traced 
His partiality for the self-designation—the Son of man. 
The same abstention from apologetic speech is observable 
in His manner of referring to His death, When He 
began to speak to His disciples of that tragic event, His 
manner was that of one making an announcement, not that 
of one offering an explanation or an apology. 

Thus reticent in what related to Himself, Jesus was 
copious in apology in reference to the nature of His 
mission, and of the kingdom whose advent He proclaimed. 
The kingdom of heaven He preached was very different 
from what men looked for. In two respects especially it 
differed from the Messianic kingdom of popular expecta- 
tion: in its spirituality and in its wniversality® The Jews 
looked for a political Messiah, and the work they expected 
Him to do when He came was, not to create a new thing, 
but to restore an old thing—to give back to Israel her 
national independence and glory, and to be a second David 
ruling in wisdom and righteousness over a united, free, 
strong, and prosperous people. But Jesus, so far as one 
can judge from the evangelic records, never dreamt of 


1 For a discussion of the question, What was Christ’s idea of the kingdom 
of God? vide Book III. chap. iii. Here the results of that discussion are 
taken for granted. 


4. APOLOGETICS. 


restoring the kingdom. What He had in view was a new 
creation, not a restoration; a kingdom of heaven, not a 
kingdom of this world; a kingdom affecting primarily and 
principally men’s souls rather than their bodies, In 
preaching the kingdom, He addressed Himself to men 
whom the world accounts miserable, and offered them 
boons which the world does not value. The most obtuse 
hearer could not fail to perceive that whatever might be 
the precise import of such discourse, it related to a king- 
dom very diverse from that of common expectation; and 
while all might admire the dignity and solemn grandeur 
of the Beatitudes, not a few probably went away feeling 
that their hopes were mocked, and their understanding 
perplexed by sentences which in effect pronounced the 
wretched blessed. 

If the spirituality of the kingdom proclaimed by Jesus 
was a disappointment to Jewish expectation, its other 
attribute of universality was in a still greater degree an 
offence to Jewish prejudice. The spirit of exclusiveness 
was a prominent feature in the religious character of the 
Jews. It had its root partly in pride, partly in a mis- 
taken sense of duty. The people of Israel had been chosen 
of God to be the medium through which the whole world 
should eventually be blessed. This was God’s great pur- 
pose in Israel’s election; but the method involved temporary 
isolation in order to ultimate union in one divine common- 
wealth. That isolation had one unhappy result. It led 
the chosen race to mistake the means for the end, and to 
regard the outside world with abhorrence and contempt. 
Israel fell into the fatal mistake of imagining that election 
meant a monopoly of divine favour, and imposed ‘the duty 
of hating all outside the pale. This imaginary duty she 
performed with great cordiality. The orthodox religious 
Jews of Christ’s time abhorred all dogs without the gates 
of the holy city; pagans, semi-pagan Samaritans, publicans 
who, thongh Jews by birth, were the representatives of 
foreign dominion, and even the people of their own race 


INTRODUCTION. 5 


who were ignorant and negligent of the commandments of 
the scribes—the “ sinners,” or “lost sheep of the house of 
Israel.” 

To a people thus minded a universal religion common to 
Jew and Gentile could not be welcome. Yet such was the 
religion of Jesus. In proof it is sufficient to point to such 
sayings as: “Ye are the salt of the earth,’ “Ye are the 
light of the world,” and to the attitude assumed by Jesus 
towards the outcasts of Jewish society, the “ publicans and 
sinners,’ who to orthodox Jews were as pagans, as is 
implied in the proverbial expression: “Let him be unto 
thee as an heathen man and a publican.”! Jesus loved 
these outcasts, and freely associated with them; and the 
interest He took in them was the beginning of a social and 
religious revolution, It was universalism in germ. The 
man who could be a friend of publicans and sinners, and 
go to be a guest in their houses, could have no objection 
on principle to associate with heathens. 

With instinctive discernment of what was involved, the 
strictly religious fellow-countrymen of Jesus earnestly and 
repeatedly found fault with this part of His public conduct, 
and so put Him on His defence for the crime of loving the 
unloved and the morally unlovely. The words He spoke 
in self-vindication have been preserved, which is not sur- 
prising, seeing they are full of poetry and pathos and 
benignant sympathy with erring humanity, and contain the 
very quintessence of God’s gospel to mankind. These 
words constitute Christ’s apology for His mission as a 
Saviour, and for the kingdom of God as a kingdom of grace 
free to all. They are the first apology made for Chris- 
tianity in its simplest aspect as the good news of God to 
a sinful world. ‘They are familiar to all readers of the 
Gospels, but it may not be superfluous to indicate here 
the principles underlying them, stated in a form adapted to 
meet objections, which, first raised by the Pharisees, have 
found numerous sympathisers in all ages, even among men 

1 Matt, xviii, 17, 


6 APOLOGETICS. 


of a very different stamp from those narrow Jewish 
religionists. 

1. Christianity aims at curing moral evil, and therefore 
it addresses itself to those who stand in greatest need of 
its aid. “They that be whole,” said Jesus, “need not a 
physician, but they that are sick.”1 Thereby He intimated 
that He came to be a physician, and that like every 
physician, He felt it to be His duty to devote His 
attention to those who most urgently required the 
benefit of His skill. Were Christianity a mere philo- 
sophy, it might address itself exclusively to the cultivated 
class, and leave the rude mass of mankind unheeded. 
Were it a system of religious mysteries, like the sacred 
rites with which the annual festival of Ceres was celebrated 
at Eleusis, it might in that case also confine its interests to 
the privileged few, and neglect the many as unworthy of 
initiation. But professing to be an effectual remedy for 
the moral diseases of mankind, it cannot consistently be 
fastidious and -aristocratic, but must address itself to the 
million, and be ready to lay its healing hand even on 
such as are afflicted with the most loathsome and deadly 
maladies, 

2. Christianity has faith in the redeemableness of 
human beings, however sunk in sin and misery. Not 
deceiving itself as to the grave nature of the ailments 
with which it finds men afflicted, it yet does not despair 
of curing them. Philosophy, coldly contemplating man- 
kind from her exalted position, may consider vast numbers 
of the race incapable of moral improvement, and so regard 
all philanthropic efforts directed towards that end as wasted 
labour. But Christianity, cherishing invincible faith in 
the moral destiny of humanity, refuses to resign itself to a 
policy of indifference based on hopelessness, and sets itself 
to the Herculean task of healing men’s spiritual diseases, 
declining to despair even in the most desperate cases. So 
far from despairing, it even believes in the possibility of 

1-Matt. ix, 12, 


INTRODUCTION. 7 


the last becoming first, of the greatest sinner becoming the 
greatest saint. This truth Jesus hinted at when He said: 
“To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little,” * 
suggesting the correlative doctrine, that to whom much is 
forgiven, the same loveth much ; in other words, that from 
among the children of passion, prone to err, may come, 
when their energies are properly directed, the most devoted 
and effective citizens and servants of the divine kingdom. It 
seems a bold and hazardous assertion, but it is one never- 
theless which the history of the Church has fully justified. 
3. Christianity thinks the meanest of mankind worth 
saving. It rejoices over a solitary sinner redeemed, not a 
picked sample, but any one taken at random. Jesus said: 
“T say unto you, That joy shall be in heaven over one 
(such) sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and 
nine just persons, which need no repentance.”* With such 
joy “in heaven,” or among Christlike men, the Pharisees 
could not sympathise. It seemed to them that people like 
the publicans were not worth saving, hardly even worth 
damning; and in this view many of uncelestial, inhuman 
temper, in every age, are only too ready to agree with 
them. But the genius of Christianity is like the good 
woman in the parable who set value on a single small coin, 
and could not rest till she found it, and expected all her 
neighbours to rejoice with her when she had succeeded.’ 
Jesus Christ set a high value on every creature endowed 
with a human soul, seeing in him a lost coin bearing 
stamped on it, however marred, the image of God, a lost 
sheep capable of being brought back to the fold, a lost 
son-of God who might any day return to his Father’s 
house. 
4, Christianity assumes that God’s attitude towards 
mankind is the same as that of Christ. Jesus believed and 
said that there was joy in heaven over a sinner repenting, 
such as He Himself felt. This, in truth, was His radical 
defence to those who found fault with Him. He pled that 
1 Luke vii. 47, 2 Luke xv. 7. 3 Luke xv. 8, 9, 


8 APOLOGETICS. 


in taking a keen interest in the erring, He was but doing 
as they did in heaven. To His accusers it was an effective 
reply ; for while the idea of God it suggested was widely 
different from that cherished by the Pharisaic mind, yet 
they could not on reflection quarrel with the doctrine that 
God is good and ready to forgive, and that it cannot be 
wrong to be like Him. Yet the alleged “joy in heaven” 
is, after all, the thing which men have ever found it hardest 
to believe in: some, because they harbour the incurable 
suspicion that God’s thoughts towards men are thoughts 
of evil; others, because they cannot conceive of God 
having thoughts of any kind, loving or the reverse ; 
Christ’s whole way of representing God, as a Father who 
careth for His wayward children, appearing to them, how- 
ever beautiful as poetry, anthropopathic, and from a philo- 
sophie point of view incredible. The Absolute, they tell 
us, can have no thoughts, no purposes, no joys, no sorrows. 
A sinner repenting may be an interesting scene to men of 
philanthropic spirit on earth, but it is not visible from 
heaven. The difference between a sinner penitent and a 
sinner impenitent, great as it appears to us, is Inappreciable 
at that distance. If this be true, then apologies for Christi- 
anity are idle, for in that case Christianity is only a lovely 
dream. Christ is not the revealer of God, His love to man 
is an amiable weakness, His ministry of mercy a fruitless 
endeavour ; for why strive to bring men to repentance, if 
repentance have no significance Godwards, and sin be 
nothing real? We shall have to grapple with this dreary 
theory hereafter. Meanwhile let us trust the word of 
Christ, and venture to believe that He uttered truth as 
well as poetry when He declared “there is joy in heaven 
over one sinner repenting,” and go forward in our apologetic 
course with such ideas of God and man in our minds as 
those which underlie the apologies He made in His own 
behalf as the sinner’s Friend, 


INTRODUCTION. ) 


Section II.—The Attack of Celsus and the Reply of Origen. 


LITERATURE. — Origen, Contra Celswm ; Pressensé, The 
Martyrs and Apologists, 1871; Theodor Keim, Celsus’ 
Wahres Wort, 1873; Patrick, The Apology of Origen, 1892. 


Apology occupied a very prominent place in the history 
of the early Church. In the first three centuries of our 
era Christianity had to defend herself before the civil 
magistrate, pleading that she was not dangerous to the 
State and might safely be tolerated; against popular pre- 
judice, pleading that she was not an immoral or inhuman 
religion ; against the attacks of pagan philosophy, pleading 
that she was not irrational. Among her most formidable 
foes of the philosophic class was Celsus, believed to have 
been a contemporary and friend of Lucian, who has been 
aptly named the Voltaire of the second century. In the 
latter half of that century Celsus wrote a work against 
Christianity, entitled, ’AX767s Xoyos, to which Origen, by 
request, wrote a reply about the middle of the century 
following! In his philosophy, Celsus seems to have been 
an eclectic. Origen states that in his other works he 
shows himself an Epicurean, but that in his polemic 
against Christianity he concealed his connection with the 
school of Epicurus, lest the avowal of it should weaken the 
force of his argument against those who believed in a 
providence, and set God over all. From the extracts out 
of the Zrue Word, preserved in Origen’s reply, it appears 
that Celsus was familiar with, and an admirer of, the 
writings of Plato, and there is also evidence that in some 
of his opinions he was in affinity with the Stoics.? 


* Keim, in the sub-title of his above-named work, describes the True 
Word as the oldest controversial writing against Christianity from the view- 
point of the ancient theory of the universe (Antiker Welianschauung), He 
dates it 178 A.D. 5 

2 Patrick (The Apology of Origen) is of opinion that the Celsus of the 
True Word was not Celsus the friend of Lucian; that he was not an 
Epicurean, like the latter, but a Platonist, and that the value of his work 
just lies in its being a work by a Platonist ; vide pp. 9-15, 


10 APOLOGETICS. 


While the attacks of other ancient unbelievers may 
without much loss be forgotten, it is important that the 
student of Christian apologetics should know something of 
the assault made by Celsus, and of the manner in which it 
was met by Origen. The opponents were well matched ; 
the attack of the pagan philosopher was deadly, and the 
defence of the Church Father wise ; and there is much to 
be learned from both. 

The objections of Celsus to Christianity may be classed 
under two heads: (1) his philosophic prejudices ; (2) his 
main argument. 

1. To the head of prejudices belongs the decided distaste 
manifested by Celsus as a man of letters for the rude 
simplicity of style characteristic of the sacred writers 
generally, and of the teaching of Christ and His apostles in 
particular. This distaste finds frequent expression in the 
“True Discourse.” Thus, ¢g, in a passage in which the 
author seeks to show the affinity between the good moral 
elements of the Christian system and the views of Greek 
philosophers, he asserts that what is good and true in 
Christianity has been said before, and better, by Plato or 
some other Greek writer. In another place, where he has 
occasion to refer to Christ’s doctrine of passive submission 
to injury, he describes Christ’s way of putting the matter: 
“ Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy 
right cheek, turn to him the other also,” as rustic compared 
with the elegant manner in which the same moral truth is 
put by Plato when he makes Socrates say to Crito: “ We 
must on no account do injury; we must not even, as the 
multitude think, take revenge for evil done.” Origen’s way 
of dealing with this petty literary prejudice is characterised 
by dignity, magnanimity, and wisdom. He is not careful to 
defend Christianity against the charge of rusticity, nor does 
he make any attempt to disparage Greek eloquence. He 
simply puts in a plea of utility. The simplicity of the 
gospel suits its professed character as a message of mercy 
from God to the millions of mankind. The beautiful ornate 


INTRODUCTION. 11 


style of Plato has profited only a few, while books written 
in less pretentious style profit many. “This I say,” 
remarks Origen, in a truly philosophic spirit, “ not blaming 
Plato, for the wide world of men has usefully produced him 
also.” } 

Celsus was further prejudiced against Christianity be- 
cause of the prominence it gave to faith. He represents 
Christian teachers as unwilling either to give or to ask a 
reason of their belief, and saying: “ Inquire not, but believe, 
and thy faith will save thee; wisdom is bad, foolishness is 
good.” Origen replies that Celsus caricatures the Chris- 
tian position; that Christians do not neglect inquiry or 
despise true wisdom; and that in niece importance to 
faith in religion, they but give due prominence to a prin- 
ciple which enters into all human affairs, even into the 
business of choosing a master in philosophy. It would be 
well if all could study philosophy; some Christians do, but 
many have neither the talent nor the leisure. Surely it 1s 
good that such without philosophy and by faith are turned 
frott sin unto righteousness. Many have been so turned 
by faith in the gospel; and this proves it divine, for 
“nothing useful among men comes into existence without 
the providence of God.” ? 

More violent than either of the foregoing was the pre- 
judice created in the mind of Celsus by the intense interest 
taken by Christians, following the example of Christ, in the 
sinful and the miserable. He represents the preacher of 
the gospel as saying in effect: “ Let no one who is educated, 
wise, or prudent approach; but if any one is illiterate, 
foolish, or untaught, a babe in knowledge, he may come to 
us;” and as aiming at making converts only of the silly 
and senseless, of slaves, women and children. Whence, he 
asks, this preference for the sinful? contrasting with the 
strange practice of Christians the more rational way of 
pagans, in inviting to initiation into their mysteries men of 


1'O yp words rav dvoparwy xoopos Xpnoinws xal rorov Hyeynty, lib. vi. ¢. 2, 
2 Oddy yap cpnorey ty dvdpaoross abet) yiyveras, lib. 1. ¢. 9. 


12 APOLOGETICS, 


pure exemplary lives. This is the old Pharisaic complaint : 
“this man receiveth sinners,” uttered in perfect good faith 
by one who thought he did well to be angry with Christians 
for their perverse sympathy with the ignorant and erring. 
So new and unfamiliar a thing was the philanthropy of 
Jesus and His disciples. What helped to increase the 
perplexity of Celsus was his unbelief in conversion. He 
held that men who were sinners by nature and habit could 
not be changed either by compassion or by severity: for 
“to change nature thoroughly is very difficult.”1 Origen’s 


reply was very simple. In the name of Christianity he 


pled guilty to the charge of loving the sinful and the foolish, 
but he denied that the Church cared only for them in the 
sense meant by the objector. 

These prejudices are comparatively superficial, but the 
main argument of Celsus struck at the heart of the Christian 
faith, its conception of God, in the person of Christ, enter- 
ing into the world as a redeeming power. He assailed the 
incarnation on three grounds, maintaining, first, that it 
degrades God by subjecting Him to change; second, that it 
unduly exalts man, by making him the object of God’s 
special care; third, that it has in view an unattainable end, 
the redemption of man, the cure of moral evil. 

“God,” said Celsus, enforcing the first of these three 
positions, “is good, honourable, happy, the fairest and 
the best; but if He descends to men He becomes sub- 
ject to change—from good to bad, from the honourable to 
the base, from happiness to misery, from the best to the 
most wicked. Let no such change be ascribed to God.” ? 
Origen replied that the descent of God into humanity 
implied no such change as“Celsus imagined; not from good 
to bad, for He did no sin; nor from honour to disgrace, 
for He knew no sin; nor from happiness to misery, for 
He humbled Himself, remaining none the less blessed. 
What is there bad in kindness and philanthropy? Who 


¥ ddew yp dusipas erring rayyvdasaoy, lib. iii, O 65. 
2. Lib. iv. 14, 


a 


INTRODUCTION. 13 


would say that a physician seeing horrible things and 
touching loathsome things, that he may heal the sick, passes 
from goodness to badness, from honour to disgrace, from 
happiness to misery ?? 

More distasteful even than the theological was the 
anthropological postulate of the incarnation to the mind of 
Celsus. The central truth of Christianity seemed to him 
to attach far too much importance to man. What was man 
that God should be thus mindful of him? Origen quotes 
a passage from the Zrue Word, in which Jews and Chris- 
tians, fancying themselves the objects of divine care, are 
compared to bats, or to ants coming forth from their ant- 
hill, or to frogs holding council in a marsh, or to worms 
assembling in the corner of a dunghill, disputing with each 
other which of them were the greater sinners, and claiming 
a monopoly of God’s favour.2 The insignificance of man is 
a favourite theme with Celsus, on which he expatiates with 
cynical delight. He scouts the idea that man was made 
in God’s image; ridicules the notion that man is an end 
for God in His works of creation and providence, any more 
than other creatures; denies man’s lordship over creation ; 
and enters into elaborate detail to prove that man is not 
much, if at all superior to the beasts in his intellectual, 
moral, and religious endowments. His statements on the 
last mentioned topic may appear only the whimsical ex- 
aggerations of one bent on overwhelming with ridicule the 
pretensions of man to the supreme position in creation, and 
to a special place in the divine regards. But in the main 
Celsus was quite in earnest in his anthropological specula- 
tions. His views regarding man’s position in the world 
and in relation to God, were in keeping with his attitude as 
the opponent of Christianity, and formed an essential part 
of his pantheistic theory of the universe. 

Celsus further maintained that the end of the incarnation 
—the cure of moral evil—is unattainable. His doctrine 
of evil was to this effect. Evil is not God’s work; it is 

1 Lib. iv. 15. 2 Lib. iv. 23. 3 Lib. iv. 84-99, 


14 APOLOGETICS. 


inherent in matter which is eternal and not made by God, 
for God makes nothing mortal or material, but only the 
spiritual’ The origin of evil being traceable to a necessity 
of nature, its amount is invariable? Thus the possibility 
of redemption is excluded, as it is also by another 
doctrine held by Celsus, that all the changes which take 
place in the universe are subject to the law of periodicity. 
That which has been shall be. The present state of things 
will reproduce itself in some future eon, any present state 
of things you choose to think of. This law of periodicity, 
applied by the Stoics even to the gods, Celsus contended 
for chiefly with reference to human history. “Similar,” 
he said, “from beginning to end is the period of mortals; 
and according to the appointed revolutions the same things 
always by necessity have been, are, and shall be”? Ag 
Origen remarks, this doctrine, if true, is manifestly sub- 
versive of Christianity, for it is idle to speak of a redemp- 
tive economy acting on free agents by moral influence, 
where a reign of necessity obtains; and if all beings must 
eventually return to the state they once were in, then 
man’s unredeemed state must have its turn, and Christ 
shall have died in vain. A sufficiently gloomy outlook ; 
but the Celsian theory has its cheering side. For our con- 
solation we are told that evil, for aught we know, may be 
good. “Thou knowest not what is good for thee, or for 
another, or for the whole.”* There is, of course, a sense in 
which this is true; but applied, as Celsus meant it to be 
applied, to sin or moral evil, it means that sin is not a 
reality ; that there is no such thing as absolute moral evil; 
that, in the words of a modern writer, “ evil is only good 
in the making.” This is the opiate administered by pan- 
theism in all ages to soothe conscience, deaden human 
sensibilities, and enable men to contemplate with philoso- 
phic indifference the moral condition of the world, as at 
once irremediable and not needing remedy. — 

That Celsus conceived God pantheistically is manifest 

1 Lib. iv. 52. ? Lib. iv. 62, 8 Lib. iv. 67. * Lib. iv. 70, 


INTRODUCTION. 15 


from the extracts from his work preserved by Origen. 
God, he taught, cannot be reached by reason, and cannot 
be named, What the sun is among things visible, being 
neither eye nor sight, but the cause of seeing to the eye, 
and to sight of its possibility, and to things visible of their 
being seen, and yet not the cause for himself of being seen, 
that is God among the things conceived of by the mind. 
He is neither mind, nor thought, nor knowledge, but the 
cause to the mind of knowing, and to thought of its being 
possible, and to knowledge of its existence, and to all 
objects of knowledge, and to truth itself, and to being } 
itself, of being; being Himself beyond all things, knowable 
by a certain ineffable power. This statement is not abso- 
lutely incompatible with theistic conceptions of God, and 
accordingly Origen does not seem inclined to find much 
fault with it, here as elsewhere displaying characteristic 
magnanimity, as one ever ready to receive in a candid spirit 
things well said by Celsus, or by the Greek philosophers, 
whose opinions he espouses. But the idea naturally suggested 
by the comparison of God to the sun is that of a Being 
unnameable, unknowable, in some sense the cause of all 
being, yet unlike anything that is, as the sun is unlike the 
eye, while it is that which enables the eye to see; not even 
like the human mind, or possessing the properties of mind, 
thought, and knowledge; a being whose nature cannot be 
inferred from any of his works, material or mental, of whom 
nothing can be predicated, not even being itself. 

Quite consistently with his pantheistic mode of conceiv- 
‘ing God, Celsus was an earnest apologist for polytheism ; 
for all the world over, and in all ages, pantheism in theory 
means polytheism in practice. The supreme deity of this 
philosopher was quite superior to jealousy, had no desire 
to enjoy a monopoly of worship, could magnanimously 
tolerate a host of minor divinities, each receiving his share 
of homage; for were they not all parts of him, or modes 
of him? He deemed all religions tolerable (Christianity 

1 Lib. vii. c. 45, 


16 APOLOGETICS. 


excepted), because all the particular deities were in his 
view manifestations of the Great Unknown. Polytheism 
he justified by the simple process of reasoning: whatever 
is, is part of God, reveals God, serves God, therefore may 
rationally be worshipped. Christianity he excepted from 
this wide toleration, because it worshipped a jealous God 
who was not content to be one of many. This jealousy 
ascribed to God by monotheistic religions radically signifies 
that God is a Being to whom moral distinctions are real. 
The god of Celsus, the god of pantheism, is not jealous, 
because he is not the Holy One, but simply the Absolute. 
The category of the ethical is merged in the wider all- 
embracing category of Being.? 


Section III.—Free Thought in the Eighteenth Century. 


LITERATURE.—Leland, A View of the Principal Detstical 
Writers, 1754; Lechler, Geschichte des Englischen Deismus, 
1841; L. Noack, Die Freidenker in der Religion, 1853 (this 
book gives an account of the representatives of religious 
free thought in England, France, and Germany); A. S. 
Farrar, Bampton Lectures on the History of Free Thought 
in Religion, 1862; M. Pattison, Essay on “the Tendencies 
of Religious Thought in England from 1688 to 1750,” 
in Essays and Reviews, 1860; Leslie Stephen, History of 
English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 1876; Cairns, 
Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, Cunningham Lecture, 
1880. 


The interest of the attack considered in last section lies 
in the fact that it was made near the beginning of our era, 
and shows how Christianity presented itself to hostile 
minds when it was yet young. The interest of “ Deism” 
lies in its proximity to our own time, and in the fact that 
it shows how Christianity appeared to a generation whose 
thoughts, though in many respects antiquated, have been 
more or less assimilated by the present generation. As 
was to be expected, the point of view of the eighteenth 

1 For the views of Celsus on polytheism, vide lib. viii. of Origen’s work. 


INTRODUCTION. 17 


century is greatly changed from that of the second. In 
the time of Celsus it was the central truth of the Christian 
faith that was assailed; in the eighteenth century it was 
its literary documents. The Protestant doctrine of Scrip- 
ture as the infallible record of a supernatural revelation, 
setting forth “ what man is to believe concerning God, and 
what duty God requires of man,” was presupposed, and 
the aim of unbelief was to assail the conception of such 
a revelation as unnecessary and unverifiable, and its record 
as lacking the characteristics that a book professing to 
contain such a revelation ought to possess. The move- 
ment was European, and found many eager advocates in 
England, Germany, and France. 

In England the history of deism covers a period of 
about a hundred years, commencing from the middle of 
the seventeenth and extending to about the middle of the 
eighteenth century; its rise being represented by Lord 
Herbert of Cherbury, and its decline by Lord Bolingbroke. 
The great controversy embraced a large variety of topics, 
each successive adversary assailing the common object of 
hostility from his own chosen point of attack, and all 
combined compelling Christianity, through her champions, 
to defend herself in every direction in which she appeared 
weak to the doubting spirit of the age. One assailed the 
divine Person of the founder of the faith, another its 
prophetic foundations? a third its miraculous attesta- 
tions,? a fourth its canonical literature Another group of 
opponents took up a more general ground, and sought 
to show that a special revelation was unnecessary, 
impossible, or unverifiable, the religion of nature being 


1 Charles Blount, in a translation of the two first books of the work of 
Philostratus on Apollonius of Tyana, furnished with copious and character- 
istic notes, 1680. 


? Anthony Collins, in The Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, 
1713. ‘ 


* Woolston, in A Discourse on the Miracles of our Saviour, 1727 ; replied 
to by Lardner. 


_ * Toland, in Amyntor, 1698 ; replied to by Jones on the Canon, 
B 


18 APOLOGETICS. 


sufficient and superior to all religions of positive institu- 
tion. This was the common position of all deists, but 
some made it their business to emphasise it. To this 
class belonged Dr. Tyndal, author of Christianity as Old 
as the Creation, who is entitled to be viewed as the repre- 
sentative and spokesman of English deism, whether regard 
be had to the merits of his book, or to the fact that he, 
more than any other of the free-thinking fraternity, seems 
to have been in the mind of Bishop Butler when he wrote 
his famous Analogy. The very title of Tyndal’s book gives 
him a certain claim to the place of representative man, 
supplying as it does a fit motto for a scheme of thought 
which believed natural uninstructed common reason to 
be a sufficient and safe guide in religion, and disclaimed 
all indebtedness to Christianity except in so far as it was 
a return to the simplicity of nature, a protest against 
the corruption of natural religion by superstition, even 
as deism was itself a protest against a degenerate Christi- 
anity corrupted by professed believers. 

Deistical attacks were generally not straightforward, the 
real design being masked, and the point formally proved 
not the true opinion of the writer, but that which he 
deemed it safe to utter. It is, however, not difficult to 
ascertain Tyndal’s position. It was as follows: God can 
be known sufficiently by all men through the use of their 
natural faculties. The religion of nature, based on this 
naturally acquired knowledge of God’s being and character, 
is perfect. That it is so is proved by the fact of its being 
used as the touchstone of all positive, instituted, tradi- 
tionary religions; also by the fact that manifold deplorable 
mischiefs have arisen wherever the notions dictated by 
reason concerning God have been departed from. Being 
perfect, the religion of reason excludes all revelation except 
such as is merely a republication of the law of nature, A 
revelation distinct in its contents from the religion of 
reason can differ only in adding to the eternal moral laws 


4 Published in 1730. 


INTRODUCTION, 19. 


of the universe positive precepts, which are simply means 
towards ends, and derive their obligation from the arbitrary 
will of the lawgiver. It is, however, not credible that a 
good God would restrict human liberty by such arbitrary 
impositions, Nor can it be believed that a professed 
revelation consisting of such impositions emanates from 
God, when .it is considered what baleful effects—super- 
stition, immorality, falsehood, persecution, strife, division 
—have sprung from faith in so-called revelations of that 
kind. Then, apart from these evils, how many instituted 
religions there are! How shall we choose the true one 
save by the aid of reason? Nay, this aid is needed even 
by those whom the chance of education has thrown into 
the true traditionary religion. Mark the epithet “true”: 
it is printed in italics, as if the author believed ex animo 
that there was a true traditionary religion. But the 
emphasised adjective simply means the so-called true. 
It is as if the word had been printed in inverted commas. 
The “true” traditionary religion needs help from the 
religion of nature, because its documents are far from 
clear in meaning, and the agents of revelation were very 
questionable characters, and the moral tone of the Bible 
is far from unimpeachable, and even the teaching of Christ 
is sometimes, as in reference to riches and marriage, very 
liable to be misunderstood. 

But if the religon of nature be so clear and perfect, how 
comes it that superstition is at all times so very prevalent, 
and that those who walk in the sunlight. of reason are ever 
a small minority? This is a question for which the deist 
was bound to find an answer. Tyndal’s answer — the 
answer of all deists—was summed up in one word, Priest- 
craft. Many a hearty curse do those poor priests come in 
for in the pages of deistical writers. Bentley, in his reply 
to the Discourse of Free Thinking, by Anthony Collins, 
explaining the significance of the epithet “free” in the title 
of that book, says that it comprises two ideas—presumption 
and suspicion, “’Tis a firm persuasion among them,” he 


20 APOLOGETICS, 


remarks, “that there are but two sorts in mankind, 
deceivers and deceived, cheats and fools. Hence it is 
that, dreaming and waking, they have one perpetual theme, 
priestcraft. This is just like the opinion of Nero, who 
believed for certain that every man was guilty of the same 
impurities that he was ; only some were craftier than others 
to dissimulate and conceal it. And the surmise in both 
cases must proceed from the same cause, either a very 
corrupt, or a crazy and crack-brained head, or, as it often 
happens, both.” 

The widespread prevalence of ignorance and darkness 
might very reasonably be held to show the need of a 
revelation at least in the sense of a republication of the 
religion of nature. This accordingly was what the apolo- 
gists of last century, such as Dr. Samuel Clarke,? chiefly 
insisted on. No attempt was made by them to disparage 
reason and natural religion. The fact was so far other- 
wise that one might with more plausibility allege that 
too much importance was assigned by them to these, and 
too little to those aspects of Christianity which rise above 
reason into the region of mystery. Even Butler could 
write such a sentence as this: “For though natural 
religion is the foundation and principal part of Christi- 
anity, it is not in any sense the whole of it.”* Christi- 
anity was regarded by its advocates, in those days, too 
much as a matter which could be proved by reason, and 
which existed to be reasoned about, and which could be 
shown to be true by plain common-sense arguments 
appreciable by any ordinary man; the aspects of the 
system which did not, admit of such treatment being 
quietly allowed to fall into the background. “Common- 
sense” was the watchword of the age; a very good thing 

1 Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free Thinking, by Phileleutheros 
Lipsiensis, p. 12. 

2 Discourses on the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. A review 
of this work forms the last chapter of Tyndal’s Christianity as Old as the 


Creation. 


* Analogy, Part Il. chap. i. 


INTRODUCTION. 21 


in its way, but a very uncertain test of truth, often a very 
vulgar thing, and always a very fragmentary thing, viewed 
as an inventory of man’s spiritual endowments. There is 
a great deal more in man than common sense, and the 
men of the eighteenth century do not seem to have been 
aware of the fact. As Mr. Pattison remarks: “The defect 
of the eighteenth century theology was not in having too 
much good sense, but in having nothing besides.” } 

Another prominent defect in the apologetic of that time 
is the low utilitarian view it took of the chief end of 
revealed religion, as intended to serve the purpose of a 
moral police to restrain vice and keep men within the 
bounds of decency. It was strongly insisted on, as a great 
recommendation of Christianity, that its doctrines had a 
powerful tendency to reform men’s lives and correct their 
manners. This truth was emphasised very specially in 
connection with the doctrine of a future life, and its 
certified solemnities of bliss and woe. The fear of a 
future hell, it was gravely pointed out, helped to make 
sinners behave themselves here. What a degradation of 
religion to convert it into a mere purveyor of motives to 
morality, and hold it up as a bugbear to frighten evil 
livers into sobriety and righteousness, their secret inclina- 
tions remaining meanwhile unchanged, ready to break forth 
anew into excess and wrong, if only the external pressure 
could be got rid of! The aim was mean, and the success, 
had it. been as great as its promoters wished, would have 
been a gain to the State rather than to the kingdom of 
God. But the success by all accounts was small. The 
age of the “Evidences” appears to have been an age of 
dissolute morals. What else was to be expected? What 
could a religion whose self-defence appealed to nothing 
higher than the common sense of the multitude, and 
which sought to influence men mainly through fear, do 
for the healing of moral evil? It had nothing to inspire 
enthusiasm in noble minds, and in the ignoble it was 

1 Essays and Reviews, p. 297, 


22 APOLOGETICS. 


more likely to provoke a desire to find it false, than to 
drive them, contrary to inclination, into the practice of 
virtue. The cure of infidelity and immorality came from 
a different quarter. When the twilight of deism had 
darkened into night, there came from heaven a new 
dawn, bringing a restored faith in a more spiritual 
Christianity, which was its own witness to regenerated 
hearts. 

The religious movement in Germany corresponding to 
deism in England, goes by the name of Aufkldérung, which 
may be rendered in English Jllwminism. The name is 
to a certain extent a key to the nature of the thing. It 
traces its origin to the Cartesian philosophy, which made 
clearness the test of truth. Illuminism is the idolatry 
of clear ideas. This idolatry began with Wolff, the 
systematiser of the Leibnitzian philosophy, who sought to 
place all known truth on a basis of mathematical demon- 
stration. It was carried to its height by the so-called 
popular philosophers of the Aufklérung, who, abandoning 
the systematic method of teaching philosophy, discussed 
philosophical problems in an easy literary style, adapted to 
the taste and capacity of the general public. In the hands 
-of these writers the Cartesian principle, “the true is the 
clear,’ degenerated into an overweening value for vulgar 
common sense. This excessive respect for the uninstructed 
human understanding meant in religion deism, in philo- 
sophy aversion to speculation, in morals eudemonism, and 
in all departments of knowledge indifference to history, 
acquaintance with what men of former times thought 
being rendered unnecessary by the light each man carries 
in his own breast. From all these characteristics naturally 
flowed another, very conspicuous in the writings of the 
period, self-conceit. 

The authors of the Aufklérung were very numerous. 
The best known now are Lessing and Reimarus; Lessing 
through the intrinsic merits of his works; Reimarus by aid 
of Lessing, who published extracts from his MS. work 


INTRODUCTION. 23 


entitled 4 Defence of the Rational Worshippers of God, 
under the name of Zhe Wolfenbiittel Fragments, and by 
Strauss, who in 1862 published a digest or summary of 
that work.” 

Lessing’s general attitude is sufficiently indicated in two 
short writings, entitled Zhe Testament of John and The 
Religion of Christ; and in the dramatic composition 
entitled Nathan the Wise. The first- named writing 1s 
a dialogue based on a story told by Jerome concerning 
the Apostle John, that when through great age he was so 
feeble that he had to be carried into the church, and was 
unable to speak at length, he was wont to repeat the 
words, “Children, love one another”; and being asked why 
he did this, replied, “ It is the command of our Lord, and it 
is enough.” The moral pointed by Lessing is, Christianity 
consists in love, not in holding any particular opinions 
concerning the founder of Christianity ; in Lessing’s own 
words: “At the first the salt of the earth swore by the 
Testament of John (love one another); now the salt of 
the earth swear by the Gospel of John”—as understood by 
the theologians to teach the dogma of Christ’s divinity. 
The other piece, Zhe Religion of Christ, conveys the same 
thought by suggesting a distinction between the religion 
Bitch Christ Epos practised, and the Christian religion 
which worships Christ as God, the two being held to be 
incompatible. Nathan the Wise is a poetic tribute to 
the religion of reason, and has not inappropriately been 
called Lessing’s poetical confession of faith. The chief 
characters in the story are persons professing three kindred 
religions, the Mohammedan, the Jewish, and the Christian ; 
at first they exhibit towards each other the religious pre- 
judices in which they have been educated, but at last they 


1 Apologie oder Schutzschrift fiir die verniinftigen Verehrer Gottes. 
Hamburg, 1767. 

2 Hermann Samuel fat hate und seine Schutzeschrift fiir die verniinfiigen 
Verehrer Gottes. 
8 Zeller, Geschichte der Deutschen Philosophie. 


ey | APOLOGETICS, 


are discovered to be members of the same family. The 
moral is, that those who are divided by different positive 
religions are brethren as men; that men and religions are 
to be respected in proportion as they practise or inculcate 
humane feeling ; that that which is common to all religions 
is of more value than that which is peculiar to any one of 
them; and that men are to be guided not by what they 
believe, but by what they do. 

While heart and soul devoted to the religion of reason, 
Lessing was tolerant in his attitude towards positive religion 
as at least a necessary evil. He did not, like the English 
deists, regard instituted ‘religions as the inventions of 
priests and tyrants for selfish ends, but more genially con- 
sidered them as, if inventions, at least useful inventions 
suited to the prevailing state of culture; or as the special 
forms which the religion of nature, the soul of all religion, 
took among the nations, just as the various forms of civil 
government are embodiments of natural right. Of this 
general tolerance for positive religions, the Jewish and the 
Christian of course got the benefit. Lessing regarded both 
as useful in their time when the human race was in its 
spiritual minority, but as destined to be superseded by the 
pure religion of reason when the race arrived at. its 
majority, and justifiably neglected at all times by such as 
stand in no need of leading-strings. This view of what 
believers call revealed religion he developed in the well- 
known tractate, The Education of the Human Race, the 
leading idea of which is, that as education in general gives 
man nothing which he could not have from himself, but 
gives it sooner and easier, so the religious education con- 
veyed by revelation give’ to the human race nothing to 
which human reason left to itself would not eventually 
come, but only gave and gives the most important of these 
things, the essential truths of religion, earlier and more 
easily In this process of education the Old Testament 


* Those who desire full information concerning Lessing and his writings 
may consult Lessing: His Life and Writings, by James Sime, 1877. 


EE 


INTRODUCTION. 25 


is the primer, and the New Testament the second lesson- 
book, the latter superseding the former, and being destined 
itself to be superseded by the gospel of reason; for the 
end of all education is to make the pupil independent of 
the means by which his training is carried on. 

In propounding the foregoing theory as to a divine 
plan for the religious training of mankind, Lessing may 
be said to have acted rather as the apologist than as 
the assailant of revelation. His large genial nature gave 
houseroom to ideas and tendencies not easily reconciled. 
He was no mere creature of the Aufkidrung. He possessed 
virtues which he did not acquire in that school, and he 
was free from some of its most characteristic vices. 
Herder called him the “right thinker among the free 
thinkers.” The eulogy was not undeserved, and it pos- 
sesses value as coming from one who was worthy to be 
associated with Lessing, as occupying a far more appreciative 
attitude towards revelation and the Bible than that of the 
illuminists. Herder taught the Germans of his time to 
set a high value on the prophetical and poetical portions of 
the Old Testament, and so in his own way did good service 
as an apologist.! 

While thus tolerant and genial in his attitude towards all 
positive religions, Lessing felt lively sympathy with men of 
more truculent temper. Hence the publication of The Wolf- 
enbiittel Fragments, which, like the whole work from which 
they were extracted, exhibit the worst features of eighteenth 
century unbelief, and especially that scurrilous treatment 
of the Bible and of Bible characters which makes the 
literature of deism now so unsavoury reading. Of this no 


1 An apologetic literature like that of England can hardly be said to have 
existed in Germany in last century. One book, however, of a professedly 
apologetic character. may here be mentioned, that of F. V. Reinhard, 
Versuch tiber den Plan welchen der Stifter der Christlichen Religion zum 
Besten der Menschen entwarf. This book was published in 1781, and ran 
through several editions. It argues from the mere plan which Jesus formed 
for the wellbeing of mankind to the truth, and divine, incomparable value 
of His religion, It is a book still worth reading, 


26 APOLOGETICS. 


samples need here be given. For one thing only Reimarus 
deserves mention in a rapid sketch of the free thought of 
his time, viz. the distinct manner in which he formulates 
his fundamental objections to the Bible as the record of 
a supposed revelation. His criticism is based on two 
assumptions: that if a revelation was to be made it would 
be given in the form of a system of doctrine expressed in 
precise terms, and that men of blameless lives would be 
chosen to be the agents of revelation. Of course he had 
no difficulty in showing that neither of these requirements 
is satisfied by the Scriptures, and proceeding triumphantly 
to the conclusion that they are not the word of God. But 
his inference is to be disallowed because his assumptions 
are false. In making these assumptions he showed himself 
to be a disciple at once of the philosopher Wolf and of the 
Protestant dogmatists of the seventeenth century; of the 
former in his love of system, of the latter in taking over 
from them the doctrinaire conception of revelation, as 
consisting in the supernatural communication of a body of 
theological truth through the writers of the sacred books. 
The use he made of that old orthodox conception as a weapon 
of attack on the faith shows the need for revising the idea of 
revelation, and for asking whether revelation and the Bible 
are synonymous terms, and whether the chief end of re- 
velation be indeed to communicate theological instruction.2 

In the closing chapter of his book on Reimarus, Strauss 
remarks on the inconsistency of which eighteenth century 
unbelievers, like Reimarus, were guilty in freely imputing 
to the agents of revelation, not excepting Jesus and the 
apostles, trickery and fraud, while recognising the purity of 
Christ’s teaching, and the enthusiasm with which the 
apostles propagated the lying invention of the resurrection. 
The explanation of the riddle he offers is to this effect: 
The men of the eighteenth century assumed the historical 
truth of the Bible narratives, and yet were unbelievers in 
the miraculous. But the caput mortwum which remains 

‘ On this vide my book on The Chief End of Revelation. 


INTRODUCTION. 27 


after the spirit of the divine has departed out of a revela- 
tion and miracle—history is deceit. The nineteenth 
century gets over the difficulty by not assuming the truth 
of the narratives, but rather regarding the miraculous as an 
after-growth, a moss overspreading in the course of ages 
the historical foundation, without conscious intention on 
the part of any one to gain currency for falsehood. It 
also recognises the importance of the imagination as a 
factor in human history, in contrast to the men of the 
earlier century, who set value only on common sense, and 
saw in man only a reasoning being. Hence the difference 
between the two ages in their respective treatment of 
positive religions. The former traced the origin of all 
positive religions to conscious fraud; the latter refuses to 
believe that any religion had its origin in fraud. The 
former levelled down all positive religions to one low moral 
level of imposture ; the latter levels up all positive religions 
to the same high level of sincere, though it may be 
mistaken, hallucinated conviction. Broadly speaking, the 
distinction thus taken between the two ages is well 
founded. Whether the modern method of disposing of the 
miraculous be more successful than that which it has 
superseded is another question. Deceivers, or self- 
deceived, such are the alternatives. The alternative now 
in favour is certainly the less injurious to human nature, 
and the less offensive to religious feeling, 

Of French free thought in last century, which was to 
some extent an echo or product of English deism, 
Voltaire and Rousseau are the leading representatives. 
A full history of the movement would have to speak of 
both, but in this hasty outline Rousseau alone need be 
referred to. He is much the more worthy spokesman of 
the religion of nature. Voltaire’s works are now unread- 
able, but the Confession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar} in 


1 It forms a part of mile, a treatise on education in the shape of an ideal 
history, and sets forth what the author thinks should be taught the pupil, 
at the proper age, on the subject of religion, 


28 APOLOGETICS. 


which Rousseau expounds his religious position, can still 
be read with a thrill of delight. It is worthy to be 
associated with Nathan the Wise as a poetical eulogium on 
natural religion, and it is charged with a passion and a 
pathos all its own. It is in keeping throughout with the 
spirit of the eighteenth century, both in method and in 
substance, so that it is unnecessary to offer an elaborate 
analysis of its contents. The source of truth for the 
confessor is plain common sense, the inner light, la Lumiere 
interieure, and the revelation such as we might expect from 
such a quarter. He proves the being and attributes of God 
to his own satisfaction by familiar processes of reasoning, 
including the argument from design. He assigns to man, 
in virtue of his intelligence and freedom, a sovereign place 
in the world. While claiming for man this exalted position, 
he at the same time owns that he is a slave, through the power 
of the passions inherent in the body. He acknowledges the 
existence of moral evil, but strives to clear God of all 
blame for it, and to reduce its amount to a minimum, in 
this as in other respects true to the optimism characteristic 
of the deistic type of thought He asserts the competency 
of conscience to be the guide of life, and follows its guid- 
ance as far as the body with its imperious desires will 
allow. He cherishes devout sentiments towards the Deity, 
refusing, however, to pray for any blessing, spiritual or 
temporal, and contenting himself with the one all-sufficient 
utterance of the pious mind, “ Thy will be done.” 

Having finished his exposition of the creed of natural 
theism, the author of Emile makes the vicar of Savoy 
indicate his attitude towards revealed religion. He starts 
with the assertion that natural religion is sufficient for all 
practical purposes. What need for more? What purity of 
morals, what dogma useful to man can be drawn from a 
positive religion that cannot be reached by the use of 
reason? But suppose a positive religion to be required. 


+ This will be more fully explained in Book I. chap. v., on ‘The 
Deistic Theory of the Universe.” 


ee 


INTRODUCTION, 29 


There are many such ; how find out the right one? Either 
they are all alike good, as various embodiments of the one 
Catholic religion of nature, or there must be signs by 
which the solitary acceptable one can be known—proofs 
accessible to all men everywhere; for if there were a 
religion on earth outside of which salvation was impossible, 
and in one place in the world a single honest mortal had not 
been impressed with its evidence, the God of that religion 
would be an unjust, cruel tyrant. But the examination of 
these evidences is a very serious affair, so serious as to 
amount to a reductio ad absurdum of the theory which 
makes a revealed religion necessary to salvation. In view of 
what the task involves, it is not credible that God can have 
required such an amount of toil and trouble in order to salva- 
tion. “I, for one,” protests the vicar, “ have never been able 
to believe that God ordained me under pain of damnation to 
be learned. I have therefore shut all the books, There 
is one only, open to the eyes of all, the Book of Nature.” 

While thus declining to believe in the necessity of a 
revelation recorded in a book written in learned tongues, 
Rousseau speaks with marked respect of Christianity and 
its Author. The holiness of the gospel, he confesses, is an 
argument which speaks to his heart, and to which he 
should be sorry to find a good reply. Can a book at once 
so sublime and so simple be the work of men? Can it 
be that He whose history it relates is no more than a man ? 
Shall we say that the history of the Gospels is an invention ? 
No Jewish authors could invent that tone, that morality. 
The gospel has characters of truth so striking, so perfectly 
inimitable, that the inventor would be more astonishing 
than the hero. Yet, on the other hand, that same gospel 
is full of incredible things opposed to reason which no man 
of sense can receive. What is to be done in presence of 
such contradictions? “To be modest and circumspect, to 
respect in silence what one can neither reject nor compre- 
hend, and to humble oneself before the Great Being, who 
alone knows the truth,” 


30 APOLOGETICS. 


Section IV.—Free Thought in the Present Time. 


The contrast drawn by Strauss between eighteenth and 
nineteenth century unbelief might be indefinitely extended. 
We live in a different world, and, whether believers or 
unbelievers, find ourselves related to a greatly altered 
environment. Science has made a mighty advance, new 
philosophies have arisen, biblical criticism has been at 
work, the religions of mankind have been studied on the 
comparative method. The result is that new questions 
have come to the front, unbelief has assumed new forms, 
and faith has been compelled to defend itself with new 
weapons. To indicate the full extent of the change would 
take longer space than can be spared; it must suffice here 
to point out the altered attitude in reference to the subject 
of revelation and the Scriptures. 

In two respects the free thought of our time differs 
from that of the eighteenth century. The first is that — 
referred to by Strauss. The offensive depreciatory criticism 
of the Bible, its authors, and principal characters, too 
common in the earlier period, especially in England, has 
given place to a sincere recognition of the sacred volume 
as of exceptional value, and worthy of “an high and 
reverend esteem.” Modern unbelief, however, does not, 
any more than that of the eighteenth century, concede the 
claim advanced for the Bible to authority as a rule of faith. 
Not only so; it does not admit that the Bible itself. 
supplies any basis or justification for such a claim, and 
this is the.second point of difference between it and the 
unbelief of the earlier time. The free thinkers of the 
eighteenth century accepted from Protestant scholastic 
theologians their doctrinaire conception of revelation as 
consisting in the communication of dogmas concerning God, 
man, the world, and their relations, and of the Bible as the 
repository of such dogmas, and reasoned destructively from 


1 For a more extended contrast between the free thought of the twe 
centuries, vide Book I. chap. vi., on ‘‘ Modern Speculative Theism.” | 


INTRODUCTION, 81 


this idea. The tendency of our time, on the contrary, is to 
regard the Bible as profitable, not for doctrine but for life, 
as edifying “literature” rather than as divinely - given 
instruction in “dogma”; as fitted and intended solely for 
religious edification, and laying no claim to any such 
function as scholastic theology has ascribed to it. 

In this altered view of the Bible, the nineteenth century 
is in close sympathy with a great free thinker of the 
seventeenth. Spinoza is nearer us than are the deists 
and illuminists. He is indeed, as the late Mr. Matthew 
Arnold remarked, coming to the front, insomuch that 
there is no man whose writings it is more worth while 
studying in order to understand modern thought in philo- 
sophy and religion. The work in which his views on the 
Bible are stated is the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the 
professed design of which is to offer an apology for free 
thought—a defence of the liberty of philosophising on all 
subjects human and divine, as not forbidden by a right 
use of the Scriptures, and not contrary to the true interest 
of the State? The position contended for by the author. 
is that the Bible was not intended to teach, and does not 
in fact teach, any definite doctrines concerning God, man, 
or the world, but has for its sole object to promote the 
practice of piety, justice, and charity. A man may make 
a very wise, good use of these holy writings, and be a true 
believer in the Scripture sense, and hold all manner of 
opinions concerning God, faith and piety requiring not true 
but pious opinions. To support this position Spinoza. 
enters on a discussion of the nature of prophecy, and the 
value of miracles, real or supposed, as a source of know- 
ledge concerning God. With regard to the former, he 
arrives at the conclusion that we must not seek in the 

1 Vide Essay on ‘‘Spinoza and the Bible” in Essays in Criticism. 

* The T’ractatus was published anonymously in 1670, two years after the 
publication of Hobbes’ Leviathan, to which in its political part it bears a 
close resemblance. The occasion of its being written, as the author in- 


forms us in the preface, was the disputes between Calvinists and Arminians, 
which led to the assembling of the Synod of Dort. 


32 APOLOGETICS. 


prophetic writings for accurate views concerning God, but 
merely for such teaching as tends to promote piety and 
morality, the prophets not being raised by their prophetic 
gift above liability to ignorance and error, in reference to 
matters which have no bearing on charity or practice. On 
the subject of miracles he maintains that from miraculous 
events, however viewed, we can learn neither the essence, 
the existence, nor the providence of God, all these being 
best perceived from the fixed and immutable order of 
nature. With regard to the apostolic writings in the New 
Testament, he admits that they do contain dogmatic or 
philosophic elements, but he seeks to rob these of all 
claim to be authoritative statements, by the suggestion 
that the apostles wrote not as prophets but as theological 
doctors, not prefacing their utterances with a “ Thus saith the 
Lord,” but addressing their views to reason, and supporting 
them by argument, so that they are to be taken for what 
they are intrinsically worth. 

As a protest against a purely scholastic conception of 
revelation, these views of Spinoza, however extreme, are 
of real and permanent value. How far they are from 
being out of date may be seen from such a work as 
Literature and Dogma, which is simply the Tractatus done 
into modern English. This revival in recent years of the 
bold opinions of the philosophic Jew of Amsterdam by a 
distinguished British man of letters, whose works have 
been widely and sympathetically read, seems to give 
urgency to the questions, What is the raison d’étre of the 
Bible? what is the true conception of revelation? Two 
widely contrasted theories, which may be distinguished as 
the theological and the ethical, have been propounded. 
Which of the two is the true theory, or are they both 
erroneous in different directions ? 

Spinoza’s view of the Bible was based on a preliminary 
inquiry into its literary characteristics, along the lines of 
investigation made familiar to us by the modern science 
of biblical introduction. Whatever we may think of his 


i P 


INTRODUCTION, oo 


final conclusion, there can be no doubt that his method 
was sound. Criticism must precede theological construc- 
tion. We must learn all we can about the history of these 
holy writings before we can be in a position to determine 
with confidence to what extent or intent they are profit- 
able for doctrine. Modern critics are busily engaged in 
the study in which Spinoza played the part of a pioneer, 
and their labours cannot be ignored by any one who would 
wisely speak as to the didactic value of the Scriptures, 


CHAPTER ILI. 
THE FUNCTION AND METHOD OF APOLOGETIC, 


LITERATURE.—Sack, Christliche Apologetik, 1829; Drey, 
. Die Apologetik, ete., 1838; Lechler, Ueber den Begriff der 
Apologetik, Studien und Kritiken, 1839; Schleiermacher, 
Kurze Darstellung des Theologischen Studiwms, 1810; De- 
litzsch, System der Christlichen Apologetik, 1869 ; Baumstark, 
Christliche Apologetik auf Anthropologischer Grundlage, 
1872-89; Ebrard, Apologetik, 1874-5 (translated by T. & 
T. Clark); Chalmers, Lvidences of the Christian Revelation. 


The foregoing historical sketch may suffice to convey a 
rudimentary and popular idea of the need for and the 
nature and aim of Christian Apologetic. In this chapter 
an attempt will be made to define more exactly the 
function and method of this branch of theological study, 
and to indicate the plan on which the present work is 
constructed. 

Some topics of a scholastic nature discussed in recent 
apologetic treatises may here receive a passing notice. 

German writers, always systematic, are careful to dis- 
tinguish between Apology and Apologetic. There is, of 
course, an obvious difference. An apology is a particular 
defence of the Christian faith with reference to a definite 
attack; apologetic, on the other hand, is the science of 

G 


34 APOLOGETICS, 


apology, or the defence of Christianity reduced to system. 
A recent writer thus puts the distinction :— 


“ Apologetic differs from simple apology by method based 
on a distinct principle. There are apologies which consist 
of replies to definite attacks on Christianity, and allow their 
method to be determined by these. Such, eg., were the 
two apologies of Justin Martyr, which deal with a series 
of single attacks, and are excellent as apologies, though very 
insufficient as apologetic. Christian apologetic differs from 
apology in this that, instead of allowing its course to be 
fixed by the accidental assaults made at a particular time, 
it deduces the method of defence and the defence itself out 
of the essence of Christianity. Every apologetic is apology, 
but not every apology is apologetic. Apologetic is that 
science which, from the essence of Christianity itself, de- 
termines what kinds of attacks are possible, what sides of 
Christian truth are open to attack, and what false principles 
lie at the foundation of all attacks actual or possible.” ? 


According to this definition, the business of the sys- 
tematic apologist is not, either to make a full historical 
collection of all past apologies for Christianity, or to add 
to the list a new apology directed against the most recent 
efforts of anti-Christian thinkers, but to make students in 
this department acquainted with the sources of attack and 
the science of defence, so that as occasion arises they may 
be able to play the part of expert apologists themselves. 
Accepting this as so far a true enough account of the 
matter, it still remains open to consideration whether the 
method of historical induction would not be a good way of 
ascertaining both the sources of attack and the laws of 
defence; also whether it be either desirable or possible so 
to isolate apologetic from contemporary influences, that 
it shall give no more prominence to prevailing forms of 
unbelief than to others which were prevalent in former 
times. These two things it is certainly important to know: 
what answer believers of other ages gave to those who 

: 1 Ebrard, Apologetik, i. 3. 


INTRODUCTION. 35 


examined them concerning their faith, and what answer 
we ourselves should give to those who examine us now; in 
other words, the history of past apologies, and the apology 
which befits the present hour. Y 
At one in regard to the verbal distinction between 
apology and apologetic, the German apologists are by no 
means agreed as to the precise nature of this theological 
discipline. The idea of apologetic has been very variously 
defined. Sack defines it as the theological discipline of the 
ground of the Christian religion as a divine fact.1 He 
distinguishes between an ideal and a real side of Chris- 
tianity, and while assigning to systematic theology the task 
of developing the former aspect as doctrine, he gives to 
apologetic the function of dealing with the reality of 
Christianity, and so laying the foundation of dogmatic. 
Sack was doubtless led into this obviously one-sided view 
by the circumstance that in his day the attack against 
Christianity, as conducted, eg., by Strauss in his first Leben 
Jesu, was directed mainly against its historical foundation 
—a fact illustrating the manner in which contemporary 
unbelief almost involuntarily directs the course of apolo- 
getic thought. “Another writer, Drey, belonging to the 
same period, and subject to the same influences, defines 
) \apologetic as the philosophy of the Christian revelation and 
| of its history. With Lechler, the well-known author of an 
: excellent history of English deism, the point of view 
: changes, and apologetic becomes the scientific demonstra- 
_ tion of the Christian religion as the absolute religion, the 
~ exclusively and ideally true, alone satisfying the need of 
man as a religious being, and setting forth the pure unmixed 
truth concerning God? This view is not less one-sided 
than the former, and accordingly a third class of writers, 
including Ebrard and Delitzsch, combine the two aspects, 
and assign to apologetic a double function; on the one 


1 Christliche Apologetik, p. 4. 


this chapter. 


3 Vide the article in Studien und Kritiken referred to at the beginning of * 


36 APOLOGETICS. 


hand, that of defending the eternal truth contained in 
Christianity as tested by the facts of nature and of human | 
consciousness, and on the other, that of defending Chris- 
tianity as a historical fact viewed in its organic connection 
with the general history of religion. 

Of less moment is the question as to the proper place 
of apologetic in a curriculum of theological study. Some 
have disputed its claim to any place on such grounds as 
these: that apologetic has no distinct material to work 
upon, but borrows its material from other sciences; that 
its function of defence is one which has to be performed by 
every positive science for itself, and by theology in particular ; 
that what unbelievers attack is always some dogmatic truth, 
and if the truth assailed be properly stated and handled by 
the systematic theologian, nothing remains to be said by the 
apologist ; finally, that the truths of Christianity are self- 
evidencing, and that the evidences in which apologists 
usually deal are of little intrinsic value as means of 
exorcising doubt and propagating faith. The larger number 
take a more favourable view of the claims of apologetic, 
and are also on the whole agreed as to the position to be 
assigned to it in the systematic study of theology. The 
view expressed by \Schleiermacher is pretty generally 
accepted, viz. that apologetic is a branch of philosophical 
theology, and as such ought to be studied at the commence- 
ment of a theological course. It may indeed be regarded 
as the mediator between philosophy and theology. The 
need for such mediation has been indicated by representing 
philosophy as ending with blank strokes and signs of inter- 
rogation, pointing to theolegy as the science which starts 
where philosophy terminates, and answers the questions it 
has left unanswered. But the attitude of philosophy is 
not always so modest. Not unfrequently it leaves the 
mind of the student prepossessed with opinions concerning 
God, man, and the world opposed to those which underlie 


1 Vide Kurze Darstellung des Theologischen Studiums. | 
8 So Delitzsch, System der Christlichen Apologetik, p. 30. 


INTRODUCTION, 37 


the Christian faith, so that at least one, if not the principal, 
function of apvlogetic must be to deal with anti-Christian 
prejudices, that Christianity may get a fair hearing. 

These last words indicate the point of view from which 
the subject on hand is to be contemplated in the present 
work, and which, dismissing scholastic questions, I now 
proceed more fully to explain. 

Apologetic, then, as I conceive it, is a preparer of the 
way of faith, an aid to faith against doubts whencesoever 
arising, especially such as are engendered by philosophy aud 
science. Its specific aim is to help men of ingenuous spirit 
who, while assailed by such doubts, are morally in sympathy 
with believers. It addresses itself to such as are drawn in 
two directions, towards and away from Christ, as distinct 
from such as are confirmed either in unbelief or in faith. 
Defence presupposes a foe, but the foe is not the dogmatic 
infidel who has finally made up his mind that Christianity 
is a delusion, but anti-Christian thought in the believing 
man’s own heart. “A man’s foes shall be they of his own 
household.” The wise apologist instinctively shuns con- 
flict with dogmatic unbelief as futile. He desiderates and 
assumes in those for whom he writes a certain fairness and 
openness of mind, a generous spirit under hostile bias 
which he seeks to remove, a bias due to no ignoble cause, 
animated even in its hostility by worthy motives. But, on 
the other hand, with equal decision he avoids partisanship 
with dogmatic belief. He regards himself as a defender of 
the catholic faith, not as a hired advocate or special pleader 
for a particular theological system. He distinguishes 
between religion and theology, between faith and opinion, 
between essential doctrines and the debateable dogmas of 
the schools. There are many special views held by 
believers, of which, whether true or false, he takes no 
cognisance; many controversies internal to faith, such as 
that between Calvinists and Arminians, with which he does 
not intermeddle. 

The attitude and temper characteristic of the apologist 


38 APOLOGETICS. 


disappoint extremists on both sides. The thoroughgoing 
unbeliever is dissatisfied with him because, while conceding 
much, he does not give up everything. The dogmatising 
believer, on the other hand, is displeased because he con- 
cedes anything, or even seems indifferent to the minutest 
items of an elaborate creed, and is ready to call him 
deserter and traitor. Between the two the apologist is apt 
to fare il], and he may well be tempted to shun a task which 
is more likely to expose him to misunderstanding than to 
earn thanks and honour. But he must take his risk, and 
be satisfied if his efforts prove useful to those for whose 
benefit they are undertaken, and help some honest doubters 
to sincere stable faith. 

The end proposed may seem to restrict within very 
narrow limits the sphere of the apologist’s influence. 
“ Honest doubters,” sincere inquirers, earnest seekers after 
God and truth, groping their way amid the darkness of 
involuntary misapprehensions, how few they are at any 
time! How much more numerous the contented slaves 
of opinion, Christian or non-Christian, according to the 
accidents of birth and education! It may be so, yet, even 
if few, men of the class contemplated are supremely worth 
caring for. One such straying sheep is more worth the 
shepherd’s care than ninety-and-nine who have never 
known what it is to doubt. But they are not so few as on 
first impressions we may think, especially if we do not 
form too ideal a conception of the state, but include in the 
class all in whom there is a sincere sympathy with the 
good, an implicit rudimentary -faith in God, a spiritual 
receptivity that would readily respond to such teaching as 
that of Christ, a vague, restless longing for light on the 
dark problems of life, that under proper guidance might 
ripen into Christian discipleship. This widened definition 
takes us outside the Church, and even outside Christendom, 
and includes among our possible readers many belonging to 
the Churchless mass of men and women living in nominally 
Christian countries, and who shall say how many even 


; ae oa - 
= es ee | 


INTRODUCTION. 39 


among the vast millions whom we, with a pity tinged with 
a little self-righteousness, call “the heathen” ? The com- 
mon people of Judea heard Jesus gladly. How many of 
the same class who are never seen in our churches would 
gladly hear Him now, if His own true voice could only 
reach their ear! And are there not many in heathen lands 
who are nearer God, and the kingdom of God, and the 
Lord Jesus Christ, than are not a few of the “ Christians ” 
who find their way into India, China, and other parts of the 
non-Christian world on commercial, political, scientific, or 
other errands? As he ponders such questions, the apologist 
begins to feel that he may be addressing himself to a very 
large constituency, including, besides professional students 
of theology fresh from the study of philosophy, and no 
longer resting peacefully in the faith of their childhood, 
young men of all ranks and professions keenly sensitive to 
the higher influences of their time, honest, thoughtful 
artisans, who amid their daily toil remember that life is 
more than meat, good pagans who show themselves to 
be implicit Christians by deeds of kindness to Christ’s 
brethren the poor and needy.” 

On the subject of method great diversity of opinion and 
practice has prevailed among apologetic writers. In Eng- 
land it has been customary, following the traditions of the 
deistic controversy, to distribute the topics belonging to 
apologetics under the two heads of the Evidences of Natural 
Religion and the Evidences of Revealed Religion, the former 
including all that can be known from the works of nature 
and the spiritual constitution of man, the latter all that 
tends to confirm the supernatural teaching concerning God 
contained in the Scriptures. The evidences of revealed 
religion have been subdivided into the “externa ” and the 
“internal,” the one term, in its simplest acceptation, signi- 
fying the evidence for Christianity derivable from sources 


4 I do not remember to have read anything more to my taste on the proper 
aim and temper of the apologist than Harrison’s Problems of Christianity 
and Scepticism. Longmans & Co., 1891, 


40 APOLOGETICS, 


outside Scripture, eg. from heathen writers; the other 
denoting the evidence derivable from the Bible itself, such 
as the consistency of its teaching, the loftiness of its 
morality, the character of Christ. Neither the general 
division nor the special subdivision supplies a satisfactory 
scheme of distribution. Not the former, because by isolating 
the topics falling under the head of natural theology for 
independent discussion, it deprives them of the interest 
arising out of a conscious connection with the burning © 
questions of Christianity. Whatever we discuss, whether 
it be the being of God, or the reality of a righteous 
benignant Providence, or the certainty of a life to come, it 
ought to be felt that the discussion is carried on in the 
interest of the Christian faith. The traditional subdivision 
of the Christian evidences is still less satisfactory. The 
distinction between “external” and “internal” is neither 
clear in itself nor susceptible of consistent application, as is 
frankly acknowledged by Dr. Chalmers in his treatise on 
the Hvidences of the Christian Revelation} and as any one 
can ascertain for himself by subjecting his own mind and 
memory to a process of interrogation on the subject. He 
will find that he is liable to forget which are the evidences 
usually reckoned external and which the internal, and that 
he is not quite sure to which of the two categories any 
particular piece of evidence, say that from miracles, belongs ; 
or, in case he remembers how it is classed in the books, 
able at once to give a reason for the classification. The 
wise course to be pursued by any one who has occasion to 
deal with the subject is to discard the confused and mis- 
leading distinction altogether, and to look out for some 
other principle of classification. 

In Germany writers on apologetics base their method on 
@ scientific principle, instead of on a purely outward, 
arbitrary, and formal arrangement, as has been customary 
in England. As yet, however, no proposed method has 
secured general concurrence, each writer adopting a plan of 

1 Vol. ii. pp. 8-10, 


INTRODUCTION. 41 


his own for which he claims peculiar advantages. Baum- 
stark builds on an anthropological foundation. Taking 
man, his nature and his needs, for his starting-point, he 
seeks to show that Christianity corresponds perfectly to the 
religious wants of humanity, confirming the positive argu- 
ment by a negative one directed to prove that no other 
religion satisfies these wants. He claims for his plan that 
it admits of the whole apologetic material being easily 
grouped around the psychological demonstration, and, further, 
that it transfers the argument to a field on which we 
engage on advantageous terms in direct conflict with the 
chief modern foes of Christianity—pantheism and materi- 
alism. This method is, to say the least, very legitimate. 
It conducts us into the heart of the subject, and gives greatest 
prominence to those aspects of it which at the present time 
are of pressing importance. 

With Delitzsch the centre is not man, but the idea or 
essence of Christianity itself. His method is, first of all, 
to determine what Christianity is, then to analyse the 
idea into its elements, and thereafter to show in detail 
that these are, one and all, in harmony with the moral 
and religious consciousness of man, and contain at once 
the refutation and the truth of all opposing philosophies 
and religions. The result of the argument is to exhibit the 
idea of Christianity as being the truth of theism as opposed 
to polytheism and pantheism, the truth of pantheism as 
opposed to deism, and the truth of polytheism as opposed 
to simple theism. It is a fine conception, though, in the 
working out of it, the author gives the impression of a man 
so fully persuaded in his own mind, and so utterly at rest 
in his conviction of the truth of Christianity,as to be 
disinclined to enter into much detail in dealing with the 
position of opponents. 

The method of Ebrard is somewhat similar to that of 
Delitzsch. Having briefly stated the presuppositions of 
Christianity as the religion of redemption,—viz. the exist- 
ence of a living God, an everlasting moral law, the freedom 


42 APOLOGETICS, 


and responsibility of the human will, the existence in man 
of a state of opposition to the law, and the impossibility of 
self-redemption,—he asks and answers at length the ques- 
tion, Whether these are or are not in harmony with the 
facts of nature and of human consciousness? He then 
proceeds to the negative part of his task, which undertakes 
the refutation of anti-Christian systems, and more especially 
those of materialism and pantheism. Finally, he considers 
Christianity comparatively as one of the religions of the 
world, with a view to establish its claim to be the one true 
divinely-given religion, the perfect realisation of the religious 
ideal, 

These samples may suffice to illustrate the variety in 
plan with which it is possible to construct an apologetic 
system aspiring to scientific form and completeness! It is 
now time to explain the course to be pursued in the present 
less ambitious attempt. 

The aim naturally determines the method. The aim is 
to secure for Christianity a fair hearing with conscious or 
implicit believers whose faith is stifled or weakened by 
anti-Christian prejudices of varied nature and origin. The 
purpose of apologetic, as thus conceived, is not so much 
scientific as practical. It is not designed to give theoretical 
instruction in a branch of theological knowledge, but rather 
to serve the purpose of a moral discipline, by dispossessing 
Ingenuous truth-loving minds of opinions which tend to 
make faith difficult, presenting Christianity under aspects 
which they had not previously contemplated, suggesting 
explanations of difficulties which they had not before 
thought of, and so making it possible for them to be 
Christians with their whole mind and heart. 

For the accomplishment of this end, the first step 


* Among writers who have treated the subject from still different points 
of view may be mentioned: Fr. H. R. Frank, System der Christlichen 
Gewissheit, 1870. His starting-point is the Christian consciousness, 
Kaftan, Die Wahrheit der Christlichen Religion, 1888, His guiding 
thought is the Christian idea of the kingdom of God as the highest good, © 


INTRODUCTION. 43 


obviously is to make sure that men know what Chris- 
tianity really is) Much of the weak, half-hearted attach- 
ment to the Christian faith which prevails arises from lack 
of such knowledge. And if we wish to dispel this baleful 
ignorance, we must not begin with any ready-made idea of 
the Christian religion extracted from the creeds or current 
in the Churches, but, remembering that much prejudice 
against both creeds and Churches exists in many minds 
which we should desire to influence, we must remount to 
the fountainhead, and learn the nature of our faith from 
the records of Christ’s life and teaching contained in the 
Gospels. Nay, to avoid outrunning the sympathies of 
honest doubt by seeming to forestall the solution of any 
erave apologetic problems, we must impose on ourselves a 
still further restriction, and gather our information regarding 
nascent Christianity, in the first place, from the first three 
Gospels, leaving the fourth on one side to be dealt with at 
a subsequent stage. An honest endeavour to extract from 
these Gospels a simple account of what Jesus was and 
taught might, without further trouble, win to hearty faith 
many whose alienation has its root in social grievances 
rather than in science or philosophy or biblical criticism. 
But all doubt cannot be so easily healed. There are 
prejudices against Christianity to be dealt with arising out 
of philosophy, science, history, criticism. In view of these, 
we must consider not merely what are the Christian facts, 
but what are the presuppositions of Christianity. There 
are two classes of presuppositions to be considered—the 
speculative or philosophical and the historical. As to the 
former, Christianity is not a philosophy, but it implies. 
nevertheless, as indeed does every religion, certain charac- 
teristic ways of regarding God, man, and the world, and 
their relations; in other words, a certain theory of the 
universe. It will be of service to ascertain what the 
Christian theory of the universe is, and, having done 
that, to state and compare with it other more or less 
antagonistic theories, so that it may appear which of them, 


44 APOLOGETICS. 


in view of all interests, is most worthy to be entertained. 
The consideration of this speculative class of questions will — 
occupy our attention in the first book of this work. On 
a narrow view of the function of Christian apologetic, it 
may seem as if such abstruse discussions might be omitted. 
Why cannot we take for granted the being of God, for 
example, and go on at once to consider the positive evi- 
dences of the Christian faith? But taking for granted 
the being of God will not do much for us. The great 
matter is not that God is, but what He is. All men, in 
one fashion or another, admit the existence of somewhat 
that may be called God. Where they differ widely is in 
their conceptions of God’s nature and character. And 
what the Christian apologist is concerned to show is not 
that a God of some sort exists, but that the Christian 
idea of God is worthier to be received than that of the 
pantheist or the deist, or of any rival theory of the uni- 
verse. This task he cannot shirk if he would thoroughly 
perform the duty he has undertaken, that of establishing 
doubters in the Christian faith. For it cannot be ques- 
tioned that what keeps many in a semi-sceptical state of 
mind is that they consciously or unconsciously cherish a 
thought of God belonging to an entirely different theory 
of the universe from that which is in harmony with 
Christian belief. 

Christianity has also its historical presuppositions. 
Jesus belonged to a peculiar people, which had a singular 
history, possessed a remarkable literature, and cherished 
extraordinary ideas of its destiny. In its literature that 
people is called an elect race, implying an exceptional 
relation to God, and a position of distinction as compared 
with other peoples. It will be of importance to form just 
conceptions of the nature of Israel’s privilege, what it 
involved with regard to herself, and also what it signified 
in regard to the outside nations, and to inquire how far 
the religious history of the ancient world justifies Israel’s 
claim to be a people near to God in knowledge and in life, 


INTRODUCTION. 45 


In the course of this study we may learn to recognise as a 
fact the superiority of Israel, as in possession of a divine 
revelation, while doing full justice to all that is good in 
heathenism. We may also learn, independently of all 
doubtful questions of criticism, to set a high value on the 
Hebrew Scriptures, in which Israel’s history is related, her 
religion unfolded, her sin exposed, and her undying hope 
proclaimed. These topics will occupy us in a second book, 
having for its general heading, “ The Historical Preparation 
for Christianity.” 

A third book will treat of Christianity itself, or the 
Christian origins, including such topics as these: Jesus in 
Himself, and as the Christ; His work; His resurrection ; 
the faith of the early Church concerning Him; Paul as a 
factor in the nascent religion; primitive Christianity; the 
historic value of the evangelic documents. The considera- 
tion of these weighty themes will help us to appreciate the 
claim of Christianity to be the consummation of all that 
was best in Old Testament piety, and the absolute religion, 
and of Christ to be the Light of the world. 


BOOK I. 


THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE, CHRISTIAN AND 
ANTI-CHRISTIAN, 


eee 


CHAPTER I. 
THE CHRISTIAN FACTS, 
LITERATURE.—The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke 


_ In making an attempt in the present chapter to state the 
Christian facts, it may be well, in order to prevent mis- 
understanding, to begin by explaining that by the expression 
is not meant all that a Christian man believes to be true 
concerning the person, life, and teaching of Jesus, but only 
the things related in the Synoptical Gospels on these topics 
which possess such a high degree of probability that they 
may be provisionally accepted as facts, even by those who 
scan the evangelic records with a critical eye. The task 
now on hand is beset with difficulty, arising from the cir- 
cumstance that these records cannot, without proof, be 
assumed to contain only ‘pure objective history, but may at 
least plausibly be regarded as history coloured more or less 
by the faith of the narrators. How much or how little 
solid fact any one finds in them depends partly on the 
philosophical bias which he brings to the examination, 
partly on the extent to which, on grounds of historical 
criticism, he thinks he can trace the colouring influence of 
faith. The estimates formed of the amount of historical 
46 


THE CHRISTIAN FACTS. 47 


matter in the Gospels are, accordingly, very diverse. Some 
reduce the kernel of hard fact to a meagre minimum: the 
beautiful moral teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, or 
a new method and secret for attaining the reward of 
righteousness—the method of inwardness, the secret of 
self-denial. Some even go the length of doubting whether 
anything whatever can be definitely ascertained concerning 
Jesus; whether “the Sermon on the Mount” was ever 
preached, and whether “the Lord’s Prayer” was ever 
prayed by Him? Such style themselves, with reference 
to the history of Christ, agnostics, men who do not know, 
and who maintain that it is impossible to know. The 
imposing authority of great names that could be cited in 
support of such sceptical views might well scare one from 
attempting to determine the outlines of the Christianity of 
Christ. Nevertheless, in spite of discouragement we must try. 

We may find a good clue, to begin with, as to what was 
central in the thought and religion of Jesus, in the apolo- 
getic elements contained among His recorded sayings. 
What was He above all things obliged to apologise for ? 
It was, as we have already learned, His love to the outcast 
sinful, the “ publicans and sinners” of Jewish society. 
That love, then, we may take to be the first and funda- 
mental Christian fact. It is a very instructive fact. It 
shows us for one thing that Christ is not to be thought of 
primarily and principally as a teacher coming with some 
wonderful new doctrines, moral or religious, revealing to the 
initiated some unheard of method and secret for the attain- 
ment of felicity. This needs to be said and to be reiterated ; 
for there is an inveterate tendency among believers and 
unbelievers alike to assume that revelation must- consist 
in the communication of instruction, and that the founder 
of a religion must before all things be a great original 
teacher.2 And, beyond doubt, Jesus was such a teacher; 


1 So the late Mr. Matthew Arnold in Literature and Dogma. 
2 So Mr. Huxley in the Nineteenth Century, April 1889, p. 487. 
3 On this vide my Chief End of Revelation, chap. i. 


48 APOLOGETICS. 


but the thing to be insisted on is that, great though He 
was as a teacher, He was still greater in His love. His 
love was the great novelty, the primary revelation He 
had to make—a revelation made, as all God’s greatest 
revelations have been made, by deeds rather than by 
words. But by words likewise. For no recorded word 
of Jesus is more characteristic, more credibly authentic, 
and more significant as an index of His own con- 
ception of His mission, than this: “The Son of man is 
come to save that which was lost,’ with which may be 
associated that other parabolic saying: “They that be 
whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” 
Thereby He intimated that His proper vocation was that 
of a Saviour or Healer of spiritual disease, and suggested 
the thought that Christianity is the religion of redemption, 
a religion which announces and applies a new divine power 
of love to cure moral evil. That power He splendidly 
exemplified in His own ministry, effecting marvellous 
spiritual recoveries among the depraved by a sympathy 
which no moral vileness could repel, drawing the sinful to 
Him in perfect confidence of welcome, and making credible 
the existence of similar love in the heart of God. 

Jesus healed men’s bodies as well as their souls. The 
same sympathy which made Him pity them in their sin, 
caused Him also to bear on His heart the burden of their 
sicknesses. Some of the best authenticated narratives in 
the Gospels are accounts of cures wrought instantaneously 
on the bodies of sick persons. The stories are found in 
all the three first Gospels, and may be regarded as belong- 
ing to the original stock of apostolic tradition. They 
are all very marvellous; some, if not all, seem positively 
miraculous, not explicable otherwise than by the assump- 
tion that Jesus had at His command a supernatural divine 
power. That one so exceptionally humane should desire, 
if possible, to remove all evil, physical as well as moral, 


1 Vide my Miraculous Hlement in the Gospels, chap. iv. ; also Book IIL 
chap. iv, of this work. 


THE CHRISTIAN FACTS. 49 


was perfectly natural; that He was able by a word to heal 
a leper seems to show that in some preternatural manner 
“God was with Him.” * 

Apart from their miraculous aspect, these works of 
healing possess permanent significance as showing the 
comprehensiveness of Christ's conception of salvation. 
Nothing lay out of His way which in any respect con- 
cerned the wellbeing of man. In His healing ministry 
He was the pioneer of Christian philanthropy, and lent 
the sanction of His example to all movements which aim 
at social amelioration. 

Though Jesus was not a philosopher or mere ethical 
teacher, yet He did teach, and in a most characteristic 
style. What a religious teacher has to say concerning 
God and man is always important and worth noting. 
Now Christ’s doctrine of God was not elaborate. It was 
remarked of Him by shrewd observers among the common 
people of Judea that He taught “not as the scribes,” 
which was as if we should say now of any new religious 
teacher arising among us, “ He teaches not as a professional 
theologian.” Jesus taught His doctrine of God by a 
single word. He always called God “Father,” and that 
in connections which gave His thought about God a very 
new and startling aspect, offensive to those who were 
reputedly holy and righteous called “ Pharisees,” very 
welcome to all others, that is to the great mass of the 
Jewish people. The name as He used it implied that 
God had paternal goodwill to the unthankful and evil, to 
the immoral and irreligious, to the outcasts; that He was 
the God and Father of the mob, of the publicans and 
sinners, of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, not merely 
of Pharisees, scribes, and priests. It was only an extension 
of Christ’s thought about God when Paul said that God 
was not the God of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles ; 
and we simply apply His grand inspiring doctrine to our 
modern circumstances when we say God is the God and 

1 Vide Miraculous Element in the Gospels, chap. v. 
D 


50 APOLOGETICS. 


Father of the churchless, of the proletariat, of the denizens — 


of the lanes and slums of our great cities, of society’s out- 
casts and non-elect. It was a new idea of God, whose 
import is not yet fully realised, a revelation full of hope 
for humanity. 

Christ’s idea of man was kindred to His idea of God. 
It was as remote as possible from that of Celsus, whose 
feeling towards mankind was one of cynical contempt. 
Jesus thought a man a being of infinite value, in view of 
his spiritual endowments and possibilities. He said with 
an emphasis previously unknown, a man 7s a man, yea a 
son of God. He said this not with reference to picked 
samples—holy, wise, learned men; on the contrary, of the 
holiness, wisdom, and learning in vogue He seemed to have 
a very poor opinion; still less with reference to men that 
were rich, for of mere material wealth He always spoke 
with a compassionate disdain. He affirmed the indefeasible 
worth of human nature with reference to the poor, the 
ignorant, the- foolish, the immoral, the irreligious; to the 
amazement and disgust of those belonging to the upper 
select classes of society. He taught this revolutionary 
doctrine not as a Rabbi delivering theoretical lectures 
in the school to his disciples, but chiefly by the far 
harder and more testing method of action; freely associ- 
ating with people low down in the social scale, whose 
worth to God and men, in spite of degradation, He per- 
sistently proclaimed. ‘The reality and extent of the degrada- 
tion He was well aware of, and often described by the 
pathetic term “lost.” He knew that His outcast friends 
much needed saving, but He believed, in defiance of all 
appearances and assertions to the contrary, that they were 
capable of being saved and worth saving; that, though lost, 
they were still lost sons. This genial, hopeful, optimistic 
humanitarianism of Jesus was an astonishment and scandal 
to His contemporaries. It is not more than half sym- 
pathised with yet, even by Christendom. Were all that 
bear the Christian name earnestly of Christ’s mind, how 


THE CHRISTIAN FACTS. 51 


many degraded ones would be raised, and, what is more 
important, how many would be kept from ever sinking 
down! What countless possible victims of lust and greed 
would be rescued from wrong by the spirit of humanity 
expelling these evil demons from the heart! So, not 
otherwise, will God’s kingdom come. 

But it is not merely through care for the good of others 
that Christ’s doctrine of man works for the establishment 
of the divine moral order. It tends thereto with equal 
power through the stimulus it brings to bear on the indi- 
vidual conscience to realise the ideal of sonship. For the 
doctrine that man is the son of God has two sides—the one 
the side of privilege, the other that of duty. It is a great 
privilege to be able to call God our Father. But the grace 
in which we stand imposes high obligations. God’s sons 
must be God-like. They must realise in their character the 
Christian ethical ideal. It is a very high, exacting ideal as 
set forth, ¢g., in the Beatitudes, implying a passion for the 
right, and a willingness even to suffer for righteousness’ 
sake. That ideal, not less than God’s gracious love to all, 
is a part of Christ’s gospel for the million, And though 
it seems too high for all but the few elect ones, the 
aristocracy of the kingdom of heaven, it ought to be pro- 
claimed in all its Alpine elevation in the hearing of all. 
For its elevation is its charm. Christ's moral ideal com- 
mands universal respect, and to lower its claims to adapt 
it to average capacity, a policy too often pursued, is only 
to expose Christianity to contempt. | 

The foregoing facts suggest the thought that Jesus was 
a very remarkable person, exceptional, unique in goodness 
and wisdom, a moral phenomenon difficult to account for 
in any age and country, and especially in such an arid 
spiritual wilderness as Judea was at the beginning of our 
era. Men of all shades of opinion acquainted with His 
history are agreed in this, All subscribe to this creed at 
least, that Jesus was an extraordinary man, a religious 
genius. The Church believes Him to be God. If this 


52 APOLOGETICS. 


solemn affirmation be true, then the story recorded in the 
Gospels presents to our view this great spectacle: God 
entering into the world in human form and under the 
limited conditions of humanity, as a redemptive force, to 
battle with the moral evil that afflicts mankind. If we 
form the highest idea possible of divine love and grace, 
the amazing thing will not appear utterly incredible. On 
the physical and metaphysical side the doctrine may seem 
to present a difficulty bordering on impossibility, but on the 
moral side it is worthy of all acceptation. The world has 
a religious interest in the faith that Jesus is divine; for 
what can be more welcome than the idea that God is like 
Him, loves men as He loved them—nay, is Himself per- 
sonally present and active in that Good Friend of publicans 
and sinners ? : 

There is good reason to believe that Jesus was conscious 
of being in some sense an exceptional person. He had a 
peculiar way of designating Himself. He called Himself 
sometimes the Son of God, but oftenest the Son of man. 
What the precise import of these names may be is a sub- 
ject for careful inquiry. But they at once suggest thoughts 
of a notable personage, and provoke the question, Who can 
this be? The titles are in harmony with what He who 
wore them taught concerning God and man. “Son of man,” 
to mention the more familiar and less mysterious title first, 
probably expresses sympathy and solidarity with mankind. 
It is the embodiment in a name of the faith, hope, and love 
of Jesus for the human race. The other title, Son of God, 
expresses the consciousness of intimate relations to God; 
not necessarily exclusive, possibly common to Jesus with 
other men, but certainly implying affinity of nature between 
God and man, and great possibilities of loving fellowship. 
It is in that view the correlate of the name “ Father” 
employed by Jesus to express His conception of the 
Divine Being. If God be our Father, we are, of course, His 
sons, In one recorded saying Jesus seems to claim for 
Himself some special and exceptional privilege in the 


THE CHRISTIAN FACTS. 53 


matter of Sonship: “No man knoweth the Son, but the 
Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the 
Son.” The use of the definite article before Son and Father 
instead of the pronoun “ my,” seems to express an absolute 
antithesis and suggest a unique relation! But this need not 
be insisted on here. It is enough to signalise in general 
Christ’s manner of self-designation as expressing His con- 
sciousness of being in some sense an exceptional person, 
and as, in that view, one of the notable Christian facts. 
Two other features in Christ’s teaching claim attention 
here: His proclamation of the advent of the kingdom of 
God, and His allusions to the Messianic hope. These both 
imply something going before, and are suggestive of the 
historical presuppositions of Christianity, an elect race, a 
sacred literature, and the expectation ever cherished in 
Israel, amid present trouble, of brighter days to come. The 
utterances of Jesus on these topics were rooted in the past 
history of His people. It was perfectly natural that He 
as a Jew should speak about a kingdom of God and a 
Christ as coming, or possibly, if there were apparently good 
reasons for thinking so, as come. But did He think and 
call Himself the Christ? It is a momentous question, on 
which there is not, as yet, entire agreement of opinion. 
That Jesus might have His Messianic idea, and, in common 
with His countrymen, cherish the Messianic hope, and even 
believe in Messiah’s speedy advent, no one denies; but that 
He actually identified Himself with the Messiah, or com- 
placently allowed His disciples to make the identification, 
some are extremely unwilling to admit, The able and 
eloquent author of The Seat of Authority in Religion regards 
the ascription of Messiahship to Jesus as the earliest of 
several theories concerning His person formed by the 
1In The Seat of Authority in Religion, p. 585, Dr. Martineau represents the 
use of the article as a feature due to the influence of a later time, ‘‘ when 
the Logos theory had need to distinguish two constituents or participants 
in the Godhead.” He traces the same influence of a later theology in the 


saying, ‘‘ Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in 
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father,” p. 590, 


54 APOLOGETICS. 


Primitive Church, and finds in all gospel texts that impute 
to Jesus Himself Messianic pretensions the reflection of 
this later faith. Among His reasons for adopting this 
view is a regard to the modesty of Jesus, and to the unity 
and harmony of His spiritual nature. Now unquestionably 
these are to be respected and even jealously guarded; and 
if the Messianic consciousness ascribed to Jesus really 
involved an “inner breach of character,” it would have to 
be discarded at all hazards. But let us see how the case 
actually stands. What does “ Messiah ” translated into our 
modern European dialect mean? It signifies the bringer- 
in of the summum bonum, the realiser of all religious ideals, 
the establisher of the loving fellowship between God and 
man, and between man and man, for which the Hebrew 
equivalent is the kingdom of heaven, Now is this not 
what Jesus actually did? He introduced the religion of 
the spirit, the final, ideal, absolute religion. He brought 
into the world supremely valuable and imperishable boons: 
a God who is a Father, a regenerated human brotherhood, 
a love that had in it purpose and power to redeem from 
sin, a love that could die, and that expected to die a 
“ransom” for the million. To say that Jesus thought of 
Himself as Messiah is to say that He was aware what He 
was doing, that He understood His endowments and the 
tasks they imposed on Him. The name is foreign to us, 
and if we do not like it we can translate it into our own 
tongue. The thing it denotes is good, and we owe it to 
Jesus. Why should we hesitate to say that He knew He 
was bringing to the world that good? It is not necessary 
to think of that knowledge as involving pretension and 
claim. We should think of it rather as involving simply 
recognition of a vocation arising out of endowment, above 
all out of the unparalleled wealth of human sympathy 
with which the heart of Jesus was filled. Recognition, or 
better still, swbmission ; for the hardships and sorrows of 
the Messianic vocation were such as effectually excluded 
all vain ambitious thoughts, and insured that the Elect 


THE CHRISTIAN FACTS. 55 


One in entering on His high career should be simply 
suffering Himself to be led into a path from which all 
egoistic feelings would instinctively shrink. But be this as 
it may, Jesus was the Christ, if He did not call Himself 
Christ. He did Messiah’s work, and that is another of the 
essential Christian facts. 

Jesus represented the kingdom of God, whose advent 
He announced, as the chief good and the chief end of man, 
for the acquisition of which one should be ready cheerfully 
to part with all other possessions, and to whose sovereign 
claims all other interests should be subordinated. He 
further taught that that kingdom is a chief end for God as 
well as for men. He strongly and repeatedly asserted the 
reality of a paternal providence continually working for the 
good of those who make the kingdom of God their chief 
end. “Seek ye,” He said, “the kingdom of God, and all 
these things shall be added unto you;”? “The very hairs 
of your head are all numbered;”* “ Fear not, little flock ; 
for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the king- 
dom.” His absolute faith in the fortunes of the kingdom, 
and in God’s power and will to promote its interest in spite 
of all untoward influences, found emphatic expression in 
reference to His own personal concern therein in the words: 
« All things are delivered unto me of my Father.”* These 
simple, pathetic utterances are profoundly significant. 
They implicitly enunciate Christ’s doctrine of God’s rela- 
tion to the world, and teach in effect that the universe has 
a moral end, and that the creation is an instrument in 
God’s hands for the advancement of that end—the establish- 
ment of His kindgom of love. 

It would be a very incomplete account of the Christian 
facts which omitted mention of Christ’s conflict with 
Pharisaism, and of the important service which He ren- 


1 On this vide The Kingdom of God, chap. vi. Vide also on the whole 
question of Christ’s Messianic claims, Book III. chap. ii. of this work. 

2 Matt. vi. 33. 3 Matt. x. 30. 

¢ Luke xii. 32, 5 Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22, 


56 APOLOGETICS. 


dered to the kingdom as a critic of counterfeit goodness. 
The function of moral criticism forms a regular part of the 
prophetic vocation, but Jesus performed the unwelcome 
though necessary task under peculiarly urgent conditions. 
It has been stated that Christianity had three historical 
presuppositions—an elect race, a sacred literature, and a 
Messianic hope. But in reality there are three more which 
it is equally necessary to take into account, if we would fully 
understand the work of Jesus—an election mistaken for a 
monopoly of divine favour, a literature turned by the 
scribes into an idol, a high holy hope deeraded and 
vulgarised. When both these opposite sets of conditions 
met, the hour for Messiah’s appearing had arrived. He 
came when He was most needed, when His task was 
supremely difficult, and when His work well done would 
have its maximum of influence. In such circumstances 
realisation of the ideal inevitably involved conflict with its 
caricature. Righteousness of the heart had to be put in 
contrast to a righteousness of conformity to external 
rules; the Scriptures had to be rescued from the scribes 
by a free spiritual interpretation ; an election for self had 
to be set aside to make way for the nobler election for the 
benefit of others originally intended, and the true idea of 
Messiah had to be differentiated from all current false 
conceptions. All this Jesus accomplished in an effectual 
manner, but at a great cost. The inevitable collision with 
Rabbinism brought Him to the cross. It was not an 
unforeseen catastrophe. How could it be? One who had 
such perfect insight into the radical viciousness of the pre- 
vailing religion, must have had equal insight into the 
wicked hearts of those who practised it, and known what 
evil spirits of envy, malice, and hatred harboured there. 
The predictions of his violent death ascribed to Jesus in 
the Gospels are perfectly credible. So also are the inter- 
pretations He is reported to have put upon it: that His 
suffering was for righteousness’ sake, for the benefit of men, 


1 Vide p. 53. 


THE CHRISTIAN FACTS. 57 


endured in a spirit of self-sacrificing love, and not in vain, 
being destined, though meant for evil, to do good to many. 
Christ’s exposure of Rabbinism, important In many ways 
as a feature of His public ministry, is specially significant 
as throwing light on His view of sin. The severity of His 
tone in speaking of the Pharisees and their ways, is- 
startling when contrasted with His compassionate gentle- 
ness towards “the publicans and sinners.” The difference 
is not to be explained by class prejudices or sentimental 
partialities; it must be held to indicate a deliberate judg- 
ment as to the relative intensity of moral evil, as manifested 
in the two sections of society. That is to say, in the 
judgment of Jesus the vices of the Pharisaic character must 
have been in a higher degree opposed to the spirit of the 
kingdom of God than those which appeared in the conduct 
of the lower class. ‘That this was actually His view is 
evident from the words He is reported to have spoken to 
the priests and elders in the temple shortly before His 
passion: “The publicans and the harlots go into the king- 
dom of God before you.”! The grounds of this comparative 
estimate are obvious. The sins of “the people of the land” 
were acts of wayward impulse, and had their seat and 
source in the flesh: the sins of the Pharisees were vices 
of the spirit, and had their seat and source in the 
soul. In the one class the power of evil left the inner 
man to a certain extent untouched, the moral nature not 
so much depraved as undeveloped. The sinner was still 
human, still had in him possibilities of good that might 
be appealed to. In the other class, on the contrary, sin 
had taken possession of the inner man, of the will, the 
heart, the conscience, the whole spiritual nature. Hence it 
came that Jesus was so much more hopeful of making 
acquisitions for the kingdom of God from the irreligious 
class, than from those who were religious after the prevail- 
ing fashion. In the one case all that was necessary was to 
rouse the man against the brute, to appeal to latent moral 
1 Matt. xxi. 31. 


58 APOLOGETICS. 


energies, and utilise them for worthy ends. In the other 
case there was no man to appeal to; the man had been 
perverted into a kind of devil; all that of right belonged 
to God, and the kingdom of God, and the spirit of the 
kingdom, love, had been taken possession of by an antigod, 
a Satanic usurper, a spirit of selfishness disguising its hate- 
fulness under the cloak of zeal for religion. 

In the light of this judgment of Christ, and its grounds, 
we see how far He was from entertaining the view as to 
the nature and origin of sin held by the Greeks and by 
deists, that it has its seat in the flesh, and makes its 
appearance in human conduct because man is a being 
possessed of a material organisation which exercises a mis- 
leading, disturbing influence upon his rational nature. He 
rather believed that sin appears only in mitigated form 
when it springs out of bodily appetites and passions, and 
that it is seen in its true malignity when it has its origin 
in the soul, and reveals an evil will, a selfish heart, and a 
perverted conscience. ‘This idea of sin is one of the most 
characteristic among the Christian facts. 


CHAPTER IL 
THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE. 


LITERATURE. — Schleiermacher, Der Christliche Glaube ; 
Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural ; Ebrard, Apologetik ; 
Delitzsch, System der Christlichen Apologetik; Bruce, The 
Chief End of Revelation ; Matheson, Can the Old Faith Live 
with the New? Kaftan, Das Wesen der Christlichen Religion, 
1888; Bornemann, Unterricht wm Christenthum, 1891; 
Aubrey L. Moore, Science and the Faith, 1889. 


It is in no spirit of mere philosophical curiosity that the 
apologist sets himself to ascertain the speculative presup- 
positions of Christianity, its characteristic ways of thinking 
concerning God, man, and the world, and their relations ; 


THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE. 59 


that is to say, its distinctive theory of the universe. He 
becomes keenly sensible of the practical importance of the 
inquiry when he considers how desirable it is that all 
professed Christians should be able to maintain perfect 
solidarity in thought and feeling with Christ, to sympathise 
unreservedly with His manner of thinking and speaking on 
all subjects pertaining to morals and religion. Ability to 
do this depends largely on the question, How far our 
theoretical conceptions are distinctively Christian?! To 
decide that question, we must first know what the Christian 
theory is. This knowledge we now attempt to extract 
from the Christian facts as stated in the previous chapter. 

1. From Christ’s view of God as a Father, and of men 
as His sons, we can infer as a first speculative presupposi- 
tion of Christianity the personality of God, using the term 
in essentially the same sense in which we apply it to men. 
The relations asserted by Jesus to exist between God and 
men imply an essential likeness between the divine nature 
and human nature. But man is essentially a being who 
reasons and wills and distinguishes between right and 
wrong. Therefore God also has reason, will, and a 
moral nature. He thinks and purposes, and right and 
wrong have a meaning for Him not less than for us. He 
is a rational, ethical personality, self-conscious and self- 
determining. 

2. Christ’s view of man as indefeasibly a son of God 
involves that in the Christian theory of the universe man 
occupies a very important place. Nothing is more charac- 
teristic of any theory of the universe than the place it 
assigns to man. Pantheism and materialism degrade him. 
Christianism, on the other hand, exalts him. It commands 
all men to respect themselves as the sons of God; it enjoins 
on all men respect for each other as brethren, sons of the 
same Father; on the highest respect for the lowest, on the 


1 Aubrey L. Moore truly remarks that ‘‘it is on the ground of presup- 
positions that the battle must be fought out.”—Science and the Faith, 
p. 148. 


60 APOLOGETICS. 


wisest respect for the most foolish, on the best respect 
for the worst. It insists on the meanest reality of human 
society being regarded in the light of the lofty ideal of man 
as made in God’s image. For the Christian theory man 
cannot be a mere child of time. The relation in which he 
stands to God compels faith in immortality. God is not 
the Father of the dead, but of the living. This is the true 
Christian foundation for belief in “a future life”; not 
processes of reasoning concerning the changes of state living 
creatures are known to survive, or the abstract possibility 
of living agents surviving the greatest known change— 
death—such as those contained in the opening chapter of 
Butler’s Analogy. The only true convincing ground of 
faith in eternal life is the dignity of human nature, and the 
fact that a man at his worst is a son of God. 

The Christian, then, who desires to be in harmony with 
the mind of Christ, will firmly believe in the immortality 
of man. And, be it noted, of the whole man, not merely of 
the human soul. Herein lies the difference between the 
Christian view of eternal life and that of deism. For 
deists, as for pagan philosophers like Socrates and Plato, 
the hope for the future was the immortality of the soul ; in 
both cases for the same reason, because the vile material 
body was the seat and source of sin, and the sooner it was 
got rid of finally and for ever, the better. For the 
Christian, thinking as Christ thought, the body is not 
inherently vile, or the sole or chief source of moral evil; 
not more in need of redemption than the soul, and not less 
capable of it. 

3. The relation of sin to the body is one aspect of a 
large subject, the specifically Christian doctrine of sin. It 
is a momentous question, What is the view of moral evil 
required by the Christian facts, and appropriate to a 
Christian theory of the universe? The following state- 
ments may serve as a contribution to the answer :— 

(1) Sin is a reality, Every one must firmly hold this 
who regards Christ as He regarded Himself, as a moral 


THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE. 61 


physician, and believes that God in the person of Christ 
entered into the world as a redemptive force with fixed 
intent to fight with and destroy moral evil. God does 
not fight with a shadow, or undertake labour in vain. 
Every one must firmly hold this who believes with Christ 
in the dignity of human nature; for all minimising views 
of sin, which treat it as a triviality, an infirmity, 6 
necessity, or as the negative side of good, though humane 
and charitable in appearance, are in truth insulting to 
human nature. ‘They virtually represent man as a being 
so weak that it is idle to expect virtue from him; as a 
victim of necessity, who only deludes himself when he 
imagines that he is free; as a thing not a person, as @ 
human animal not a rational and responsible creature. 
Christianity commits no such offence against man’s dignity. 
It shows its respect for man as a moral personality, by 
imputing to him the guilt of his evil actions; and its 
charity towards him, not by denying his responsibility, but 
by making his sin a burden even to the heart of God. 

(2) Sin does not originate with God. What Jesus 
Christ, the Son of God, was grieved by and waged war 
with, cannot have come into the world by His Father’s will 
or with His consent. In the teaching of Christ we find no 
account of the origin of sin: it is there dealt with simply 
as a fact. But that beautiful saying, “Joy shall be in 
heaven over one sinner that repenteth,’ which formed a part 
of His apology for loving the sinful, excludes the idea of 
sin having God for its ultimate cause. Joy over repentance 
implies sorrow over sin. But why should God sorrow over 
that which He Himself has brought into being? Sin, 
however originating, is eternally contrary to the divine will. 

(3) Sin is not to be conceived of as a necessity, a fatal 
incurable vice of nature, inevitable for all men living in 
the body, for the first man and the last, and all between, 
Jesus Christ not excepted. The fact that Jesus represented 
Himself as a moral physician teaches us rather to regard 
sin as a disease foreign to the normal condition of human 


62 APOLOGETICS. 


nature, and, being curable, capable also of being prevented. 
From the Christian point of view, sin might not have been, 
was not always and necessarily in existence. How it ever 
came to be may be a great mystery, a difficult even an 
insoluble problem. But the worst solution possible is 
virtually to annihilate the phenomenon to be explained by 
regarding it as a physical necessity. The best and wisest 
solution, with whatever difficulties it may be beset, is to 
conceive of sin as the result of a wrong choice on the part 
of primitive man. This is the view quaintly embodied in 
the story of the temptation and fall of Adam in the book 
of Genesis. In its essential features that product of ancient 
wisdom still approves itself to our minds as the best that 
can be said on the subject. Nor are we called on to 
surrender the view therein presented by the discoveries 
or speculations of recent science. It is not irreconcilable 
with the doctrine of evolution. That doctrine teaches that 
in the gradual course of the ascent of life there arrived in 
the world at a certain period a being who was not merely 
an animal, but in rudimentary form human. The advent 
of this being was a great event, for with it began the 
possibility of moral life. It was a great step in advance, in 
which the Creator might well take pleasure. Its signifi- 
cance lay not in this that a man had appeared already as 
perfect as it is possible for man to be, for perfection can 
be reached only by a process of moral development, but in 
this that a man had appeared at all—a being made in 
God’s image, with reason and will and affection. But this 
step in advance, involving indefinite possibilities of further 
advance in a new region of life, involved also risks of 
degeneracy, or development downwards. For in the new 
type of being there were two natures: a lower animal, and 
a higher human, and their possessor would be constantly 
called on to choose which of them he was to follow. To 
choose the guidance of the higher nature was to go on in 
a career of moral advancement; to choose the guidance of 
the lower nature was to fall from the dignity he had 


THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE. 63 


attained in becoming human. This is the story of the fall 
from the point of view of modern science. Is it very 
widely different from the account given in the book of 
Genesis ? 

(4) Besides sin, or moral evil, there is in the world 
much physical evil, disease, pain, sorrow, calamity, death. 
What connection is there between the two kinds of evils? 
They were, as we have seen, closely connected in Christ's 
ministry. He was a healer of bodily as well as of spiritual 
maladies. In one case, that of the palsied man, He seems 
to have looked on the physical ailment as the effect and 
penalty of sin. And there can be no question that very 
much of the misery that is in the world is directly caused 
by men’s evil deeds. Can we say that physical evil 
universally is the God-appointed penalty of moral evil ? 
Does this view enter as a necessary element into the 
Christian theory of the universe? It is a question of great 
difficulty and delicacy, demanding careful handling, seeing 
that at this point Christianity comes into contact with 
science, which has its own way of dealing with the subject. 
Thetendencies of science and religion lie in opposite directions 
here, that of science being to explain physical evil as far as 
possible without taking moral evil into account, while that 
of religion is to find the ultimate explanation of all physical 
evil in the existence of moral evil. It is very easy to carry 
to false extremes either view, and the wisest position seems 
to be that which aims at maintaining a balance between 
them. Schleiermacher, who as much as any modern theo- 
logian strove to do justice to the claims of both science and 
religion, laid down the thesis that the collective evil in the 
world is to be regarded as penalty of sin, social evil directly, 
natural evil indirectly. The meaning of the thesis, in 
reference to natural evil, is that, viewed objectively, or from 
the scientific point of view, such evil is not caused by sin, 
but that, viewed subjectively, or as it affects us, it is the 
penalty of sin, because without sin it would not be felt to 
be an evil. Applied to death, it means that man was 


64 APOLOGETICS. 


mortal irrespective of his fall, and that nevertheless 
inortality was properly regarded by man fallen as the 
fruit and punishment of his transgression. This position 
appears to be as satisfactory as any one that could be 
stated. It certainly well accords with the spirit of Chris- 
tianity as an ethical religion, that we should conceive of 
the present state of the physical universe as in a divinely 
established correspondence with the moral condition of 
its human inhabitants. This view does not imply that the 
order of nature was altered after sin entered into the 
world. It need imply only that in the framing of nature 
God had regard to the eventual incoming of moral evil. 
Death, decay, violence, according to the testimony of science, 
were in the world not only before man sinned, but long 
before man existed. But it is conceivable that they were, 
because he was to be, prior in time, yet posterior in creative 
intention. We may imagine God, in making the world, 
providing that it should be a suitable abode for a race of 
morally fallible beings, furnished with all that was needful 
for their moral discipline—with evil of diverse sorts to be 
regarded as penalty of sin, and also with manifold forms of 
good, revealing the divine benignity, summoning to repent- 
ance, and inspiring in the penitent hope of pardon. This 
view of the universe harmonises with the tendency of 
Christianity in all things to make the moral category 
supreme. It has the further recommendation that it steers 
a middle course between optimism, which tries hard to see 
no dark side in nature, and pessimism, which with equal 
determination shuts its eyes to its good side. Christianity 
sees in the world both evil and good; evil because man 
hath sinned, and God desired that man sinning should find 
sin to be a bitter thing; good because God is gracious and 
dealeth not with men according to their deserts; the evil 
and the good serving the opposite purposes of judgment 
and mercy, and forming together one redemptive economy, 
working in different ways towards the fulfilment of God's 
grac, us purpose in Christ, to which the whole con- 


SS SSS se 


THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE. 65 


stitution of nature and the whole course of history are 
subservient. 

4, In the foregoing statement it has been assumed that 
God stands to the world in the relation of a Creator. It 
is, however, important that this should be formally enun- 
ciated as a distinct and most characteristic feature in the 
Christian theory of the universe. This position is in- 
volved in the conception, suggested in certain sayings of 
Christ already quoted, of the world as an instrument in 
God’s hands for the advancement of the divine kingdom. The 
world cannot be a perfectly pliant instrument in the hand 
of God unless it be dependent on Him for its being. If it 
existed independently of Him there might be something in 
its constitution that would prove intractable, the source 
of evil that could not be cured, and tending seriously to 
frustrate His beneficent purposes. Whether the idea of 
creation necessarily implies that the matter of the world 
had a historical beginning, is a question upon which theists 
are divided, some holding it possible for the universe to be 
the creature and the abode of God, even though it never 
came into being, but was like God, eternal! Possibly it 
might guard all Christian interests to say that the world 
might have had a beginning, and that if eternal it was so by 
God’s will. It may not be contrary to Christian theism to 
say that the world did always exist, but only to say that it 
must have existed from eternity, and that God could no 
more exist without a world than the world could exist 
without God. But it must be admitted that a creation 
implying a historical beginning most effectually guards the 
supremacy of God, and the dependence of the world upon 
Him. A world eternally existing is apt to land us in one 
of two anti-Christian conceptions. Either the eternally 
existent world assumes in its primitive state the aspect of 
a chaos which at a given date God takes in hand to shape 


1 So Dr. Matheson in Can the Old Faith Live with the New? p. 105; also 
Dr. Martineau, The Seat of Authority in Religion, p. 11. Schleiermacher 
and Rothe held the same view. 


E 


66 APOLOGETICS. 


into a cosmos, or it becomes a stream eternally flowing out 
of the divine fountain of being. The former was the view 
of Greek philosophers who conceived of the raw material 
of the world, the #Am, as independent of God for its being, 
and thought of God merely as the shaper of chaos into a 
world of order, as far as that was possible with material 
pre-existing as a ready-made datum. This theory obviously 
involves an endless incurable dualism. The other concep- 
tion is not less fatal to Christian interests. Under it 
creation becomes a process of necessary emanation, exclud- 
ing freedom if not consciousness, and God becomes con- 
founded with the universe, differing from it only in name, 
as the natura naturans of Spinoza’s system differs from 
natura naturata. The alternatives before us, if we con- 
ceive of the world as eternal, are thus likely to be either 
Manichean dualism or pantheism. God becomes either 
one of two, or He is not even one. | 
5. The Christian faith demands not only that God be 
the ultimate source of the world, but also, and for the same 
reason, viz. that the natural may subserve the moral order, 
its sustainer, as active now and always as in creation. He 
is not necessarily sole actor as in the Bible view, in which 
nature and second causes are virtually blotted out, and God 
becomes all in all. This biblical pantheism, by which nature 
is absorbed into God, is not to be regarded as a dogmatic or 
theoretical negation of nature, but simply as an intensely 
religious mode of contemplating the world. Compatibly 
therewith we can recognise a nature, a fixed physical order, 
presenting the appearance of a self-acting machine. Yet 
the appearance only. To Christian faith the world is not a 
machine to which God stands related as an artisan, with 
which, the more it approaches perfection, the less He has 
to do. It is rather an organism of which God is, as it were, 
the living soul. This view does not bind us to any theory 
as to the method by which the present order of things was 
produced. It is perfectly compatible, for example, with 
1 On the speculative system of Spinoza, vide chap. iii, of this book. 


THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE. 67 


the evolutionary theory as to the origin of the existing 
universe. There is no need to contend for special creations 
of plants and animals, as if to provide some work for God 
to do; or to regard life as something which God alone 
could produce by His immediate and absolute causality. 
We can admit everywhere natural law, yet believe also 
that everywhere is divine agency. 

6. It is characteristic of the Christian view of the world 
to cherish a large hope for the future of humanity. It looks 
for a palingenesis, “new heavens and a new earth wherein 
dwelleth righteousness.”! This hope is justified by the 
doctrine that the creation has the kingdom of God for its 
moral end. This being so, it stands to reason that the 
kingdom of God should eventually attain dimensions corre- 
sponding to the vast preparations made for its coming. 
Turning to Christ’s teaching and life, we find much to 
encourage high expectations, His own spirit was pre- 
eminently hopeful. He hoped where others despaired. 
The outcasts of society appeared to His loving eye all 
capable of being transformed into good citizens of the 
kingdom. Some of His sayings are suggestive of a great 
future for redemptive regenerative effort — those, for ex- 
ample, which compare the kingdom of heaven to leaven 
and to a grain of mustard seed. Very significant also in 
this connection is the apologetic word: “They that be whole 
need not a physician, but they that are sick.” The imme- 
diate purpose of the word is to claim for the speaker 
the privilege of having His conduct judged in the light of 
His claim to be a physician. But its permanent didactic 
significance goes far beyond that. It teaches by implication 
Christian universalism, for if the patient’s need is to be the 
physician’s justification and guide, then he must go where- 

1 This striking phrase expressive of Christian optimism first occurs in 
Isa. Ixv. 17. Canon Cheyne, in his Bampton Lectures on The Origin and 
Religious Contents of the Psalter (1891), expresses the opinion that the author 
of Isa. Ixv. and Ixvi. was stimulated to cherish the hope embodied in the 


phrase by Zoroastrianism, ‘‘ which from the Gath4s to the Bundahis so con- 
stantly proclaims this doctrine,” p. 405, 


68 APOLOGETICS. 


ever he is needed. The sphere of redemption must be 
coextensive with the sphere of sin—wide as humanity. It 
casts a gleam of hope on the most desperate forms of 
spiritual disease; for the very occasion for self-defensive 
speech arose out of the attempt to bring spiritual healing 
to classes generally regarded as hopelessly lost to God and 
goodness. This simple pathetic utterance thus proclaims 
that the redeeming love of God can go down to the lowest 
depths of human depravity, and raise its victims up to 
heavenly heights, and that its breadth and length are those 
of the wide world. 

The Christian hope embraces in its scope both worlds, 
both the present life and that which is to come. It looks 
for new heavens and also for a new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. It expects great beneficent social changes 
here, as well as a great salvation hereafter. It is not 
necessarily other-worldly, whatever one-sidedness in that 
direction it may have exhibited at certain periods in the 
history of the Church. The object of its loving solicitude 
is man, not merely man’s sow! ; and to no legitimate human 
interest can it possibly be indifferent. Still, while not 
dwarfing into insignificance the present earthly life, the 
life eternal occupies a large place in the Christian system 
of thought, as it cannot fail to do in the case of all who 
really believe that man survives death. And the question, 
Who shall share in that eternal life? weighs heavily on 
the Christian heart. Some cherish the belief that all with- 
out exception shall participate in its bliss, and that such as 
pass out of this life unprepared for the glorious inheritance 
shall be fitted for it by a disciplinary process in an inter- 
mediate state of being. General apologetic can recognise 
the legitimacy of this generous forecast, while not pronounc- 
ing dogmatically on the question. For the Christian theory 
of the universe, universal salvation is not an article of 
faith any more than it is a heresy. One thing introduces 
an element of uncertainty and doubt—the human will. 
The Christian philosopher does not believe that there is 


THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE. 69 


anything in the dA», in the elements of matter out of which 
the universe is built, capable of frustrating the divine purpose. 
But he does recognise in the will of man a possible barrier 
to the realisation of the Creator’s beneficent intentions. He 
remembers the ominous words of Jesus, “I would, ye would 
not,” and is content to cherish large hope, without dog- 
matically asserting the larger and largest possible. It 
involves no injury to the sovereignty of God to ascribe to 
man this power of resisting His will. God freely imposed 
on Himself the limitation arising out of the existence of 
human wills, that He might have a realm in which He 
could reign by love, and not by mere omnipotent force, as 
in the lower animate and inanimate spheres of being. 

While recognising human freedom as a factor in deter- 
mining the fortunes of the kingdom of God, the Christian 
theorist has profound trust in the goodwill of God. He 
believes that God “will have all men to be saved,” and 
that He desires His will to be done on earth as it is done 
in heaven, and that He is constantly working towards the 
accomplishment of these beneficent ends. Fully con- 
vinced that the divine will supports and guides the lower 
physical evolution of the universe, he is, if possible, still 
more assured that it is the firm ground and animating 
spirit of the higher spiritual evolution. He believes in the 
Holy Ghost, and in His incessant struggle for the birth of 
the better world. He sees in the great crises of history 
His action as a mighty wind; in quiet times he traces 
His blessed presence and influence as a still, noiseless, yet 
vital air, the breath of human souls. 

In reference to all things future the thoughts of men, 
even of inspired men, are very vague. It was so with the 
Hebrew prophets when they gave eloquent utterance to 
their sublime Messianic hopes, and with Christian apostles 
when they foreshadowed the advent of the divine kingdom. 
With regard to the precise nature of the good time coming, 
and the hour of its arrival, they were left to their own 

1 Matt. xxiii. 37, 


70 APOLOGETICS. 


imaginations very much as we are. The apostolic age 
expected the coming of the kingdom to be apocalyptic in 
character, sudden, and soon. The lapse of time has 
corrected these early impressions, and taught us to expect 
the grand consummation as the gradual result of a slow 
secular process of development, rather than as the astound- 
ing effect of a sudden, speedy, miraculous catastrophe. 
But we must beware lest, with the natural mistakes of the 
primitive Church, its hope also pass away. It becomes 
the disciple of Christ to cherish a spirit of high hope 
for himself, for the Church, for mankind; to believe in 
progress along the whole line, and not to settle down into 
the sluggish creed of an inert religious conservatism which 
believes that the divine redemptive force has spent itself, 
and that all God’s great achievements lie in the past. We 
ought, on the contrary, to expect God to do greater things 
in the future than He has done in any past age, greater 
things than are recorded in the pages of history, or than it 
enters into the mind of the average Christian to ask or 
even imagine. We must look for results more worthy of 
the love of God, more commensurate with the moral 
grandeur of Christ’s self-sacrifice, more clearly demonstrat- 
ing that Christ is the centre of the universe. The Chris- 
tian theory of the universe is inherently and invincibly 
optimistic. Its optimism is not shallow or impatient. Its 
eyes are open to the evil that is everywhere in the world, 
and it does not expect these evils to be cured in a day, or 
a generation, or a century, or even a millennium. Never- 
theless its fixed faith is*that cured they shall be in the 
long-run, 


THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 71 


CHAPTER IIL 
THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY, 


LiveraturE—Spinoza, Fthica ord. geom. demonstrata ; 
Pollock, Life of Spinoza, 1880; Martineau, Study of Spinoza, 
1882; Principal Caird, Spinoza, 1888; Hegel, Philosophie 
der Religion; Seth, Hegelianism and Personality, 1887 ; 
Strauss, Glaubenslehre; Lotze, Mikrokosmus, 2te Aufl. 
1869-72 (translated by T. & T. Clark); Flint, Antitherstic 
Theories, 1877; Hartmann, Die Krisis des Christenthums, 1880. 


The pantheistic theory of the universe is in deadly 
antagonism to Christianity at all points. It negatives all 
the cardinal Christian ideas—the personality of God, the 
creation of the world, the freedom of man, the reality of 
sin, providence, redemption, immortality. The radical 
principle of the theory is that God and the world are one. 
It denies to God any being distinct from the world, and 
to the world any being distinct from God. It may assume 
different forms according to the manner in which the 
divine nature is conceived. God may be conceived as 
spirit, or as substance; in the one case there results an 
idealistic form of pantheism, in the other a materialistic. 
The former species of pantheism regards the world as the 
garment through which the Great Spirit reveals Himself ; 
the latter views all particular beings, animate or inanimate, 
as accidents or modes of one universal substance, waves on 
the surface of an infinite ocean, which is God. To all 
practical intents the two are one. 

Pantheistic modes of contemplating the universe have 
prevailed more or less from the earliest ages, and in 
different countries, eg. India and Greece ; but the father of 
modern European pantheism, by general acknowledgment, 
is Benedict Spinoza, of whose views on the subject of 
Revelation and the Scriptures a brief account has already 
been given. On many grounds Spinoza is entitled to be 


72 APOLOGETICS. 


regarded as the typical exponent of the pantheistic system 
as a component element of modern European thought; 
very specially because of the great extent to which he has 
influenced the minds of leading philosophers and _ theo- 
logians during the last hundred years. Instead of dis- 
cussing pantheism in the abstract, or attempting to sketch 
the history of this type of speculative thought, it will best 
serve our purpose to study the extremely significant sample 
presentea to our view in Spinoza’s great work, Lthica 
ordine geometrico demonstrata. No better or more direct 
way to acquaintance with the genius of pantheism can be 
taken than to make ourselves familiar with the contents of 
this treatise, which in five books discourses successively of 
God, the nature and origin of the mind, the origin and nature 
of the affections, human servitude or the power of the 
affections, and human liberty or the power of the intellect. 
Spinoza was a disciple of Descartes, and his philosophy 
may be viewed as an attempt to improve on that of the 
illustrious Frenchman, by reducing its dualism to unity. 
Descartes recognised besides God two mutually independent 
substances, matter and mind, the characteristic property of 
the former being extension, and of the latter thought. 
Spinoza, on the other hand, acknowledged only one infinite 
indivisible substance, whereof thought and extension are 
attributes, and all particular beings, extended or thinking, 
modes. This one substance he called God. In his famous 
treatise on Jithics it is Spinoza’s humour to prove all 
things in mathematical fashion, his theses being marshalled 
in array like the propositions of Euclid, each proposition 
in succession being provided with its formal demonstration, 
and the demonstration being occasionally followed up by 
corollaries and scholia. The fourteenth proposition of the 
first book of the Zthics is: “ Besides God no substance can 
exist or be conceived.’ The proof of this proposition is 
rendered very easy by the definition of substance given at 
the beginning of the treatise, which is in these terms: “ By 
substance I understand that which is in itself, and is con- 


THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 73 


ceived by itself; that is, that whose concept does not need 
for its formation the concept of any other thing.” Of 
course if it belong to the nature of substance to be self- 
existent and self-caused, then there can be only one sub- 
stance, that is God. God being the sole substance, it 
follows that He is both an extended and a thinking being : 
at once “ves extensa” and “res cogitans,” the cause of all 
particular beings which are extended and which think, in 
virtue of the attribute corresponding to the nature of each 
being, the cause of things extended in so far as He is res 
extensa, the cause of things which think in so far as He is 
res cogitans. He is therefore the cause of the human 
intellect, and as such is Himself an intellectual being. The 
human mind is indeed a part of the infinite intellect of 
God. But we are warned not to infer from this that God’s 
intellect is like man’s. The intellect and will which con- 
stitute the essence of God agree with the intellect and will 
of man only in name, not otherwise than the celestial sign 
of the dog and the animal called dog which barks. All 
actual intellect is to be referred not to God Himself, but 
to God in man; in Spinoza’s terminology: ad naturam 
naturatam, not ad naturam naturantem. The two uncouth 
phrases, natura naturans and natura naturata, are employed 
by Spinoza to indicate precisely the relations of God and 
nature. They imply that God and nature are the same 
thing under different aspects. God is nature viewed 
actively, or as cause; nature is the universal substance 
with its attributes and modes viewed passively, or as effect. 

Such being the relation between God and nature, we 
know what doctrine of creation to expect from the 
Spinozan system. It is as follows: All things exist 
eternally by necessity. All things exist which can exist; 
everything possible is actual and necessary. God eternally 
produces all He has power to produce, His power being 
identical with His essence, and that in turn being identical 
with His existence. Things could not have been produced 
in any other mode nor in any other order than they have 


74 APOLOGETICS. 


been produced. ‘There is no such tl.ng as cottingency in 
the world, except in respect of our \znorance. Of all 
things whatever God is the immanent not the transient 
cause. Finally, God, or nature viewed actively, produces 
all things without reference to an aim: there is no design 
or purpose in the universe. The eternal infinite Lns which 
we call God acts with the same necessity with which He 
exists. Therefore the words perfect and imperfect have no 
sense in reference to the intrinsic nature of things, but are 
simply relative to our human way of conceiving things as 
belonging to species, and expressive of our opinion as to 
the comparative degree of completeness with which the 
characteristics of the species are reproduced in the in- 
dividuals. Whatever is real is perfect; reality and per- 
fection are the same thing. The common notion that 
nature, like man, acts for an end, or that God directs all 
things towards an end, Spinoza treats as a delusion and 
vain deceit, due partly to ignorance and partly to self- 
importance, and fraught with mischievous consequences, 
as when men see in the inconvenient phenomena of nature 
an expression of divine anger against them for their sins, 
The truth is, there is no purpose in events; all things, 
whether good or evil so-called, proceed by an eternal 
necessity of nature, and with the greatest possible per- 
fection, but without design or final causes. This doctrine 
implies that even moral evil, as we call it, belongs to the 
eternal order, and is in reelity good. From this inference 
Spinoza does not shrink. To the question, Why did God 
not create all men so that they should be guided by the 
sole governance of reason ? he acknowledges that he has no 
other reply to give than this: “Because there was not 
wanting to God matter wherewith to create all things 
from the highest to the lowest grade of perfection; or, to 
speak more properly, because the laws of nature were so 
ample that they sufficed for the production of all things 
which can be conceived by an infinite intellect.” 

These words, which form the conclusion of Spinoza’s 


THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 75 


discussion of the doctrine of final causes at the end of the 
first book of the Ethics, signify that the idea of the universe 
demands the existence of all sorts of beings, that therefore 
sinners and fools are needed to make a world not less than 
saints and wise men. Such a sentiment could be enter- 
tained only by one who had no belief in the reality of 
moral distinctions from the divine point of view, or in the 
freedom of man. Accordingly Spinoza makes no pretence 
of believing in either. He admits, of course, that there is 
a difference between a wise man and a fool, but he sees 
in the difference, admitted as a matter of fact, no ground 
for feelings of approbation and disapprobation. God, he 
teaches, has no resentment against the evil and foolish, 
seeing He has brought them into existence, and we 
ought to imitate God in this. Against this doctrine that 
evil and good are alike to God it might seem to be a valid 
objection that the evil and the good, the wise and the 
foolish, do not fare alike. Spinoza touches on the point in 
one of his letters in reply to a correspondent who had 
started the difficulty. “God,” he remarks, “is not angry 
with any, for all things happen according to His mind, but 
I deny that therefore all ought to be happy, for men can 
be excusable and nevertheless want happiness and be 
tormented in many ways. A horse is excusable for being 
a horse and not a man, nevertheless he ought to be a horse 
in lot and not a man. He who is mad from the bite of a 
dog is excusable, nevertheless he is justly suffocated; and 
in like manner he who is unable to govern his desires is 
indeed to be excused for his infirmity, nevertheless he 
cannot enjoy peace of mind, and the knowledge and love 
of God, but necessarily perishes.”4 Moral responsibility 
could not be more expressly denied than by such com- 
parisons. The denial is an essential characteristic of true 
pantheism. | 

Spinoza’s doctrine as to the nature and origin of the 
mind may now be briefly explained, His definition of a 


1 Epistola xxv, 


76 APOLOGETICS, 


mind is peculiar, “The first thine,” he tells us, “ which 
constitutes the actual being of the human mind is nothing 
else than the idea of some particular thing actually eyist- 
ing.”* This vague thesis is explained in a subsequent 
proposition by the more definite statement that the object 
of the idea constituting the human mind is a body, or a 
certain mode of extension actually existing. Our mind, in 
short, is neither more nor less than the idea of our body. 
Mind and body are the same thing conceived under 
different aspects, under the attribute of thought as mind, 
under the attribute of extension as body. Hence it foilows 
that the order of the actions and passions of the body 
corresponds to the order of the actions and passions of the 
mind. This correspondence, however, is no proof, as is com- 
monly supposed, of interaction. The mind exerts no causal 
influence on the body; its states are produced by the laws 
of corporeal nature alone. On this theory the body is as 
independent of the mind as a cause of motion as if it were 
a mere machine. On the other hand, the mind is dependent 
on the body, not indeed as a cause of thought, but as a 
condition of the continuance of its being. The mind, 
according to Spinoza, can imagine and remember nothing 
save while the body lasts. When the body perishes the 
mind ceases to exist except as an eternal idea in God. 
Such is the only immortality possible on the Spinozan 
system. When the body dies no individual mind survives, 
but merely an idea of a thing that has been in the divine 
mind, all whose thoughts are eternal, Nothing else was 
to be expected from the definition of mind with which we 
set out. My mind is the idea of my body as actually 
existing. Of course when the body is dissolved, the mind 
perishes along with it. Take away the substance and the 
shadow vanishes. 

Such is the pantheistic creed as frankly expounded by 
Spinoza. The universe is bound in an iron chain of 
necessity, which leaves no room for freedom either in God 

1 Book II. prop. xi. 


NN SE er 


THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 77 


or in man. The course of nature is unalterably fixed, and 
needs no alteration. Whatever is must be, and whatever 
is is right. All individual life is transient, only the one 
infinite substance is eternal. Nature is the ever-abiding, 
yet superficially ever-changing ocean of being, and we men 
and all things we see are the waves or the foam on its 
surface; here to-day, gone to-morrow, as the winds deter- 
mine. To this system all religions must be pretty much 
alike—all tolerable as modes under which the great One 
and All is worshipped. One may rise higher than another 
in the scale of rationality, and approach more nearly to 
that pure intellectual love of God in which, according to 
Spinoza, wisdom and true felicity lie, In that respect 
Christianity may be entitled to occupy the first place, and 
Christ its author worthy to be regarded as the wisest of 
the sons of men. In justice to Spinoza, it ought to be 
stated that he ungrudgingly conceded this position to 
Christ. 

Regard to space forbids the exposition at similar length 
of any of the more recent presentations of the pantheistic 
theory. One is, indeed, glad to escape the task, not only 
on account of its difficulty, but because, in view of the 
moral aspects of the system, it is invidious to apply the 
epithet pantheistic to any philosophy which has not become 
a matter of history. The philosophy most worthy of atten- 
tion in the present connection is that of Hegel. But the 
disciples of this great master have not been agreed as to 
the tendency of his doctrines, some putting on them a 
Christian construction, while others, such as Strauss, have 
used them for the subversion of Christianity. The former 
section of the school may be considered the more faithful 
to the spirit and aim of the master, who claimed to be a 
defender of the faith, and regarded his philosophy as a 
translation into the’ forms of speculative thought of the 
articles embodied in the Christian creed. But into the 
delicate question of the religions tendency of the Hegelian 
philosophy it is unnecessary here to enter. It will suffice 


78 APOLOGETICS. 


to point out the difference between it and the Spinozan 
system in their respective ways of conceiving God, and His 
relation to the universe. 

The points of contrast between the two philosophies 
are chiefly these: In the Hegelian system, the absolute 
Being, God, is conceived as Spirit; whereas in the Spinozan 
He is represented more materialistically as substance. 
Again, in the former, God, the world, and man are con- 
nected together by a process involving succession, if not in 
time, at least in logical thought. The absolute spirit 
becomes objective to himself, becomes another, in the 
world of nature; makes for himself, as it were, a body in 
the material universe, and loses himself therein. Then in 
man he returns to himself, recognises himself, becomes 
conscious of himself, and the great world-process is com- 
plete. In the Spinozan system, on the other hand, 
material things, modes of extension, and mental things, 
modes of thought, are, so to speak, contemporaneous and 
mutually independent manifestations of the one eternal 
indivisible substance. There is not one process binding 
God, nature, and man together, but two parallel processes, 
which are mutually exclusive though not without corre- 
spondence, the manifestation of the eternal substance as a 
res extensa in things material, and the manifestation of 
the same substance as a res cogitans in human minds. In 
this respect there is a clearer affinity between Spinoza and 


1 The late Professor Green, of Oxford, gives this statement of the vital 
truth which Hegel had to teach: ‘‘That there is one spiritual self-con- 
sciousness, of which all that is real is the activity and expression ; that we 
are related to this spiritual being; not merely as parts of the world which is 
its expression, but as partakers in some inchoate measure of the self-con- 
sciousness through which it at once constitutes and distinguishes itself from 
the world; that this participation is the source of morality and religion.” 
He adds: ‘It still remains to be presented in a form which will command 
some general acceptance among serious and scientific men.”— Works, iii. 
146. With reference to the epithet ‘‘ Hegelian,” he remarks that “‘ No one 
who by trial has become aware of the difficulty of mastering, still more of 
appreciating, Hegel’s system would be in a hurry to accept the title for him- 
self or to bestow it on another.”— Works, iii. 129, 


THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 79 


Schelling than between Spinoza and Hegel. In philosophy 
Schelling was a chameleon, and assumed in succession very 
diverse aspects. It has been remarked of him, that in all 
phases of his ever-varying speculative career he always 
leaned on some great name. Among his philosophic heroes 
and models Spinoza had his turn, and when his star was in 
the ascendant Schelling adopted at once his views and his 
demonstrative method of exhibiting them, and taught an 
Absolute which was neither subject nor object, neither 
mind nor matter, but the indifference or the identity of 
both, yet revealing itself at once as matter and as mind, as 
object and as subject, as nature and as thought. 

In proceeding now to criticise the pantheistic theory in 
the interest of the Christian mode of conceiving God and 
the world and their relations, I begin with the obser- 
vation that this theory could not have taken the place it 
holds in the history of speculative thought, nor have 
fascinated so many noble truth-loving minds in all ages, 
unless it had contained elements of real value. And it is © 
not difficult to divine where its strength lies. Pantheism 
has attractions for all parts of our spiritual nature, for the 
intellect, for the religious feeling, for the heart. Its 
fascination for the intellect lies in its imposing conception 
of the universe as a unity. The one and the all—the 
mere combination of the two ideas has a charm for the 
imagination. God the one, and at the same time the all: 
the universe of being and its ground not two but one, 
the sublime thought gratifies the craving of the mind for 
unity in knowledge, tracing all existence to one fountain- 
head, and reducing all mysteries to a single all-compre- 
hending one, that of God’s eternal being. Its fascination 
for the religious feeling lies in its doctrine of divine 
immanence. The God of pantheism is not, like that of 
deism, outside the world, but within it, its life and soul, 
present in everything that is or that lives; in the clouds 
and the winds, in the leaves of the trees and in every 
blade of grass, in the bee and the bird, endowing them 


80 APOLOGETICS, 


with skill to build their cell or nest; in man, inspiring 
him with lofty thoughts and noble purposes. Finally, its 
fascination for the heart lies in its doctrines of necessity 
and of the perishableness of all individual life. These 
supply an opiate to deaden the feeling of pity awakened by 
the contemplation of the world’s sin and misery. In 
moments of depression the heart that bleeds over the 
crime and wretchedness everywhere visible is tempted to 
clutch at a theory which relieves the weak of a burden of 
moral responsibility too heavy for them, and to accept as 
the future destiny of man annihilation, rather than face the 
dread alternative of the bare possibility of eternal loss 
involved in every theory that is in earnest in asserting the 
reality of moral distinctions. 

Besides these practical attractions, pantheism may appear 
on a superficial view to possess some speculative advan- 
tages as compared with Christian theism. Among the 
subjects on which it may seem to offer the best solution 
of speculative problems are the personality of God and the 
creation of the world. 

Pantheism meets the theistic assertion of divine person- 
ality with the counter-assertion that personality is not 
compatible with the idea of the absolute, that an absolute 
personality is simply a contradiction in terms, This posi- 
tion is essential to the pantheistic theory. That it was 
held by Spinoza may be inferred from several characteristic 
elements in his teaching, such as that will and intellect 
are one, that the intellect of God resembles intellect in 
man in name only, that all actual intellect is to be referred 
to natura naturata, that “all human minds together consti- 
tute the eternal and infinite intellect of God, which, as 
Strauss has pointed out, implies that the divine mind is 
nothing distinct from particular human intellects, but 
simply their immanent unity In this connection it is 
not irrelevant to mention the curious fact that a brief, 


1 Vide his Glaubenslehre, i. 507-8. Spinoza’s words are: ‘‘ Omnes (mentes) 
simul Dei eternum et infinitum intellectum constituunt.”—LZthic. v. 40 schol. 


THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 81 


pithy sentence of Spinoza’s, occurring casually in one of 
his letters, has been made the basis of all modern argu- 
mentation against the personality of God. The sentence is 
determinatio negatio est—definition is negation, Spinoza 
made the statement in connection with an attempt to prove 
that the figure of a body is a purely negative thing. The 
modern application to the subject now under consideration 
is as follows: All determination is negation, personality 
is a determination, therefore personality is a negation; but 
negation can have no place in connection with the most 
real Being, therefore personality cannot properly be ascribed 
to God. Fichte puts the argument thus: 


“You insist that God has personality and consciousness. 
What do you call personality and consciousness ? No doubt 
that which you find in yourselves. But the least attention 
will satisfy you that you cannot think this without limita- 
tion and finitude. Therefore you make the divine Being 
a limited being like yourselves by ascribing to Him that 
attribute, and you have not thought God, as you wished, but 
only multiplied yourself in thought.” } 


Strauss expresses the same view, with his usual clearness, 
in these terms: 


“To speak of a personal God appears a combination of 
ideas of which the one excludes the other. Personality is 
self-collected selfhood as against another from which it 
separates itself. Absoluteness, on the other hand, is the 
comprehensive, unlimited, which excludes from itself nothing 
save that very exclusiveness which lies in the idea of per- 
sonality. An absolute personality, therefore, is a non-ens, 
which-is really unthinkable.” 2 


This attribute of personality implicitly excluded from 
the Spinozan system, and explicitly denied and reasoned 
out of existence by modern philosophy, Christian theism 
cannot afford to part with. The maintenance of the 
divine personality may be beset with speculative difficulty, 

1 Werke, v. 157, 2 Glaubenslehre, i. 504-5. 
F 


82 APOLOGETICS. 


but the price which pantheism pays for riddance from the 
difficulty is too dear! For no divine personality means no 
real fellowship with the Supreme. The intellectual love 
of God, wherein Spinoza placed man’s chief good, is, by his 
own admission, simply God’s love of Himself, and as God 
loves Himself only in man, it is on man’s part simply the 
enjoyment of his own existence as a rational being. 

But how is the difficulty of reconciling personality with 
absoluteness to be got over? How can we think of God 
as a self-conscious, self-determining Ego without making 

Him dependent on something outside of Him which helps 
Him to attain self -consciousness, as we ourselves are 
dependent on the world around us, as an aid to the con- 
sciousness of being a distinct whole over against the 
universe? Now, let it be remarked, in the first place, that 
if personality, as involving limitation, must be denied to 
the Absolute, then every attribute whatever must be denied — 
to God for the same reason, even because determinatio 
negatio est. God must be conceived as a Being of whom, 
or which rather, no affirmation can be made, as pure 
abstract being, equal to nothing because it is nothing in 
particular. Yet not thus did Spinoza conceive God. He 
ascribed to the infinite substance at least two attributes, 
those, viz. of extension and thought, whereof all things 
known to us are modes. Nay, he ascribed to it an infinite 
number of attributes, apparently seeking to guard the abso- 
luteness of God from violation, not by denying to Him 
possession of any attributes, but by multiplying the number 
of attributes ad infinitum, making God, in the expressive 
phrase of Gregory Nazianzen, “a sea of being.” On this 
view, what objection can there be to include personality 
among the infinite number of attributes ? 

Some pantheists do conceive of God as the absolutely 


1 Lipsius, who represents the neo-Kantian Philosophy in Dogmatic, while 
admitting divine personality to be speculatively a contradiction, yet holds 
it to be a religious necessity. Vide his Lehrbuch der Evangelisch-Pro- 
testantisch Dogmatik, § 228, 


THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 83 


undetermined, and their view is perhaps the more con- 
sistent with the genius of the system. Accepting this view, 
what have we fora God? Not a real being, but a logical 
abstraction. Is there no absolute but this? Is there not 
an absolute which really and necessarily exists, as even 
Spinoza believed? And if there be such an absolute, will 
he not be the very opposite of the logical one? The 
logical absolute being the utterly indeterminate, the real 
absolute will be the infinitely self-determined; the logical 
absolute being absolute emptiness, the real absolute will 
be absolute fulness; the logical absolute being incapable of 
relations, the real absolute, while not needing, will be 
capable of all sorts of relations. Pantheistic philosophers 
do not settle the question as to the existence of such an 
absolute simply by not choosing to believe in Him, and 
preferring in the pursuit of an @ priori method to com- 
mence with the most abstract notion the mind can frame, 
thence to proceed from the abstract to the concrete by the 
addition of attributes, and then to conclude that the pro- 
cess of the universe is identical with the process of their 
thought, that is, that all particular determinate being 
emerges out of absolutely undetermined being. 

Returning now to the question, How can we conceive 
of God as a self-conscious personality without making Him 
dependent on an outside world through which He attains 
self-consciousness? it is obvious that this question raises 
another, Is limitation by a not-self an indispensable 
condition of self-consciousness? Theists, with one voice, 
reply in the negative. The question has been well handled 
by Lotze, who sums up a most suggestive discussion on 
the subject in these three propositions: 1. Selfhood, the 
essence of all personality, rests not on a positing of the ego 
against a non-ego, but on an immediate being-for-self which 
forms the ground of the possibility of such a contraposition. 
2. In the nature of the finite spirit lies the reason why the 
development of its personal consciousness can take place 
only through the exciting influence of a non-ego in the 


84 APOLOGETICS. 


form of an outside world. It is not because it needs the 
opposition of a foreign object in order to be a self, but 
because in this respect, as in all others, it has not the 
conditions of existence within itself. This limit has no 
place in the being of the Infinite Spirit. To Him alone, 
therefore, is a being-for-self possible, which needs neither 
for its initiation nor for its progressive development the 
help of anything outside itself, but maintains itself in 
eternal unoriginated inner movement. 3. Complete per- 
sonality is only in God; in all finite spirits is only a weak 
imitation thereof. The finitude of the finite spirit is not 
the producing cause of personality, but rather a hindering 
limit in the way of its development. In short, the drift 
of the reply given to the deniers of the divine personality 
by the theistic philosopher is this — Pantheists make 
personality consist in that which is really the defect of 
human personality, viz. that it needs an external object to 
help it to self-consciousness, and outside stimuli to promote 
its development. Our idea of self-consciousness should be 
formed, not from its beginning and progress, but from that 
to which it tends, viz. ever-increasing independence of 
outward stimuli, ever-enlarging fulness of contents, ever- 
growing conquest over the limits of space and time. That 
to which we tend, but never reach, God has in perfection 
and from eternity,a self-consciousness absolutely independent 
of outside stimulus, infinite in contents, and utterly un- 
affected by limits of space and time. Hence it is our own 
personality, rather than God’s, that we should doubt, 
human personality being only a very imperfect embodiment 
of an ideal which is perfectly realised in the Infinite and 
Absolute One. 

The creation of the world, viewed as involving a 
beginning in time, is a very difficult conception. As 
already indicated, it has been doubted whether it be 
necessary to the interests of Christian theism to maintain 
that the world had a historical commencement,? but it 

1 Mikrokosmus, iii, 575 (Eng. trans. ii. 679). 2 Vide p. 65. 


fe 


THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 85 


cannot be questioned that this mode of conceiving creation 
is more in affinity with a theistic theory of the universe 
than that which conceives of the elements of the world 
as co-eternal with, while ever dependent on, God. In 
arguing with pantheists, therefore, it is only fair to accept 
as part of the theistic position, the idea of a creation in 
time, with all its drawbacks. These drawbacks are 
manifest. It is easy to ask puzzling questions with 
reference to creation so conceived: How was God occupied 
before He created the world? Why did God make a 
world if He could do without one throughout eternal 
ages? Supposing that question to have been satisfactorily 
answered by Plato when he said, God as the Good is not 
envious, and therefore was pleased to communicate Him- 
self to beings like Himself, is not the very idea of an aim 
injurious to the perfection of God, and incompatible with 
the notion of the absolute, as implying that while the aim 
is unrealised God wants something? Finally, does not 
creation so conceived violate the absoluteness of God in 
these further respects, that it makes Him subject to the 
category of Time in His own being, inasmuch as it involves 
His entrance into a new relationship, that of Lord, and that 
it represents Him as performing a particular act, whereby it 
seems to degrade Him to the level of a human artist who 
sets himself the task of painting a particular picture at a 
given point of time ? 

Pantheism gets rid of these troublesome questions by 
adopting as its doctrine that God by necessity produces 
eternally all things possible. But it escapes difficulties in 
one direction only to encounter others not less serious in 
another direction; or rather, we may say that it covers 
over the inherent difficulties of the question by skilfully 
chosen phrases. For, in the first place, it gives really no 
account of the existence of the universe. It is easy to say 
that God, by necessity of His nature, produces all things. 
The world is here, and some account of its existence must 
be given, and you may say if you will that it is an eternal 


86 APOLOGETICS. 


necessiry efflux out of the absolute substance or spirit. 
But what is there in the idea of the Absolute that would 
lead you to expect the existence of this world, or of 
any world? Pantheism has no answer to this question. 
Spinoza did not attempt to answer it. His infinite 
substance is abstract, lifeless; it is the monotonous, 
characterless One into which the realities of the world 
have been resolved, but how out of this One come the Many 
he did not even inquire, far less explain. Hegel felt the 
pressure of the problem, and tried to solve it by introduc- 
ing into the Absolute a principle of finitude, self-limitation, 
or negation, which is supposed to give rise to an eternal 
process resulting in the manifold being which constitutes 
the universe. But capable critics concur in the opinion 
that Hegel’s explanation of the universe is neither more 
nor less than the hypostatising of a logical process, and 
that he has left the problem of existence where he found 
nt 

Pantheism seems to leave no place for the existence of 
a world in which there is progress, development, evolution, 
steady onward advance from lower to higher stages of 
being, each step in advance bringing into existence new 
things. Such a world is full of incessant change. New 
phenomena are constantly appearing—new effects of new 
causes, or of new combinations of existing causes ; if not 
absolutely new in the sense that such phenomena always 
may have been in existence in some part of the universe, 
yet new in this or that part, say in our own planet. Thus 
by general consent of men of science there must have been 
a time in the history of the earth when there was no life 
in it, though there may never have been a time when life 
was not to be found anywhere in the universe. Such a 
world created piecemeal, even though the process never 
had a beginning, subjects the Creator in some sense to the 
categories of time and space, making Him enter into new 


1 Among those who have criticised Hegel to this effect may be mentioned 
Strauss, Dorner, Zeller, Hartmann, 


THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 87 


creative and proprietary relations in this or that part of 
the creation. To escape this it would be necessary to 
invest the world with God’s unchangeableness, and say 
that all things possible were always and every where 
actual. But this would be in effect to deny the existence 
of a world, Change is involved in the idea of a world; 
a world without change is either a nonentity or it is God 
under another name. The actual world is undeniably a 
world full of change, and with reference to God’s relation 


to it we must choose between two alternatives: either to 


save His absoluteness we must assert that He stands in 
no relation whatever to the world, whether as creator or 
as preserver; or we must admit that His eternal being is 
somehow reconcilable with change, that without prejudice 
to His absoluteness He can, as Hebrew prophets teach, 
create new things—living beings, thinking men—at a 
given time, in a given part of the world. The admission 
covers the theistic idea of creation in time, at least in 
detail; and there seems to be no cogent reason why it 
should not cover the idea of a historical commencement 
of the world as a whole. If life or man may begin to be, 
why not a universe ? 

It thus appears that even on its speculative side the 
pantheistic theory is not so invulnerable as at first view it 
may seem. But it is on the moral side that its weakness 
is most easily discerned. Questions concerning the Divine 
Being and His relations to the universe are abstruse, but 
on such as refer to man, his nature and destiny, we are 
able to form more definite views, and to pronounce more 
confident judgments. And no one who in any measure 


1 Hartmann denies that simplicity and unchangeableness are attributes of 
God, doing so in the name of what he calls concrete monism, which he dis- 
tinguishes from abstract monism in this wise. Abstract monism makes the 
Many, as simple appearance, lose itself in the abstract Unity. Concrete 
monism, on the other hand, recognises the reality and independence of 
the existing Concrete over against the Unity of being. According to his 
view the dogma of divine unchangeableness belongs to abstract monism, 
Vide Die Krisis des Christenthums, pp. 88, 92, 


88 APOLOGETICS. 


sympathises with the teaching and spirit of Christ can 
hesitate what to think of pantheistic views on these topics. 
Pantheistic anthropology is at all points antagonistic to 
Christian thought. First, in its general conception of man’s 
place in the world. Pantheism in all its forms degrades 
man. It may seem as if we ought to except from this 
statement that fascinating type which makes man the 
medium through which the absolute spirit attains to self- 
consciousness. But even on this view the individual man 
is only a shadowy, fleeting phenomenon, a mere temporary 
apparition, manifestation, and individualisation of the great 
impersonal spirit of nature. Neither God nor man pos- 
sesses stable personality. The soul of the world attains to 
reality and self-consciousness only in the single souls of 
men; man, on the other hand, has no being-for-self, but is 
merely a medium of divine self-manifestation and _ self- 
consciousness, used for a season, then dispensed with. 
Whence it appears that the personality of God and that of 
man stand and fall together. Each is the guarantee of the 
other, and the denial of either is the destruction of both. 
Admit the independent personality of God, then man can 
be recognised as a distinct, though finite and subordinate 
personality. Deny the personality of God, except in so 
far as it is realised in man, then individual men are 
degraded into the position of mere temporary instruments, 
and only the human race, if even it, possesses abiding 
significance. 

The fatal bearing of the pantheistic theory on the moral 
nature of man is made very apparent by the frank utter- 
ances of Spinoza. For him human freedom is a dream, 
moral distinctions purely relative, and good and bad men 
alike entitled to recognition as constituent parts of a 
universe in which all that is real is perfect. Human 
actions of whatever nature are subject to the inexorable 
law of causality, and all alike tend to one goal. Evil and 
good from the divine point of view, regarded sub specte 
eternitatis, are one; error, sin, wickedness are words that 


THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 89 


have no absolute significance, but merely denote things 
that are evil relatively to our present feeling, comfort, and 
convenience, In the great system of the universe they are 
but the discords in the divine music of the spheres, which 
resolve into concords, and make these by contrast more 
exquisite to the ear. 

From the pantheistic point of view, the hope of indi- 
vidual immortality is a delusion. Strauss acted as the 
spokesman of the system when he wrote these remarkable 
words: “The Beyond is the one in all, but in the form of 
a future it is the last enemy which speculative criticism 
has to fight with, and if possible to overcome.”! It is the 
utterance of an ex-pantheist gone over to the ranks of 
materialism, but it none the less expresses the genuine 
thought of pantheism on the subject of immortality. While 
recognising an eternal within the temporal, it mocks at 
the idea of a life that survives death, and declares that 
with the last breath individual existence ends. The finite 
spirit then loses itself in the infinite, like a burst bubble 
in the stream. 

Against these views it is unnecessary to argue, the only 
question to be considered is whether they be truly charac- 
teristic of the theory under discussion, If they be, then 
pantheism is self-condemned for all who belong to the 
school of Jesus, or even to the school of Kant, who built 
his faith in God and in immortality on human freedom, 
and on the absolute validity of moral distinctions. 

It has already been acknowledged that pantheism pos- 
sesses powerful attractions for our religious nature in its 
doctrine of divine immanence (of which, however, it has no 
monopoly, for that God is immanent in the world is the 
belief of every intelligent theist), Nevertheless, the deity 
of pantheism is too vague, shadowy, and intangible to be 
a satisfactory object of worship. The human heart craves 


1 Glaubenslehre, ii. 739. For an instructive discussion on the bearings of 
Hegelianism on the question of individual immortality, vide Strauss’s 
Christian Mérklin, ein Lebens- und Charalterbild aus der Gegenwart, 1851, 


90 APOLOGETICS. 


a more comprehensible, definite, and congenial object of 
religious devotion than the universal substance of Spinoza, 
or the Urgeist of Hegel, or the moral order of the world 
-with which Fichte identified the divine being. Hence, 
wherever the pantheistic theory is accepted, polytheism, in 
a more or less refined form, prevails. The One in All for 
practical religious purposes breaks up into the Many ; the 
modes of the Absolute take the place of the Absolute itself 
as objects of worship; sun, moon, and stars, birds, beasts, 
and creeping things, in ruder times; the beautiful in nature, 
as reproduced by art, and genius in man, as expressed in 
literature, in highly cultured epochs. 


CHAPTER IV. 
THE MATERIALISTIO THEORY. 


Liverature—Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the 
Universe; Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, 2te Aufl. 1873; 
Lotze, Mikrokosnvus (translated by T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh) ; 
Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube, 1874; Ulrici, Gott und 
die Natur, 1866; Du Bois-Reymond, Ueber die Grenzen des 
Naturerkennens; Die Sieben Weltrathsel, 1872, 1880 (published 
together 1891); Bain, Mond and Body; Clifford, Lectures 
and Essays, 1879; Havelock Ellis, Zhe Criminal, 1890; 
Flint, Antitheistic Theories ; Martineau, Essays, Reviews, and 
Addresses, 1891 (two on Modern Materialism in Relation to 
Religion and Theology); Le Conte, Hvolution and ts fela- 
tion to Religious Thought, 2nd ed. 1891. 


Superficially viewed, the materialistic mode of contem- 
plating the universe differs widely from the pantheistic. 
In Spinoza’s system thought and extension are two inde- 
pendent attributes of the eternal and infinite Substance, 
standing in no causal relation to each other. According 
to the materialistic theory, on the contrary, thought is a 
function of the brain and a mere mode of motion. In modern 
forms of pantheism the contrast to materialism is even 


nt Tt TE na SRS ane a ee ie ee 


OE ee pe 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. 91 


more striking. The Absolute therein appears not as sub- 
stance, but as spirit, the material world being its negation, 
and the end of the whole world-process is declared to be 
the manifestation of spirit. Notwithstanding this super- 
ficial difference, however, the two systems are closely 
allied. For both the world, nature, is the great reality, 
and God and the human soul the shadowy and insubstan- 
tial. To the pantheist the physical universe is the reality 
of God; to the materialist it is the reality without God. 
God for the one is an idea, an abstraction apart from 
nature, and man a development out of nature; for the 
other God is a nonentity, a word without meaning, and 
man a curiously-organised piece of matter characterised by 
some very remarkable and not easily explicable properties. 
Materialism is the most thoroughgoing and the most 
formidable opponent of the Christian theory of the universe. 
It is the foe which is at present in the ascendant. It owes 
its prevalence to various causes. In Germany, in recent 
years, a spirit of reaction against an extravagant idealism 
has been at work, which has issued in the rapid spread of 
materialistic tendencies. But doubtless the main cause has 
been the signal progress of physical science within the 
present generation. The physical sciences are not, indeed, 
to be confounded with materialism. The aim of these 
sciences is not to propound a speculative theory of the uni- 
verse, but simply to make us as fully acquainted as possible 
with the universe as it actually exists; with the properties 
and relations of the elements of which it is composed. It 
has indeed been said that it is the interest of science that 
there.should be no God, but that is true only in the sense 


1 So Jacobi, Werke, Band III. pp. 384-5. ‘‘ It is therefore the interest of 
science that there be no God, no supernatural, extramundane, supriamun- 
dane Being. Only under this condition, viz. that nature alone exssts, as 
independent and all in all, can science reach the goal of perfection and 
flatter itself that it can become like its object all in all.” Commenting on 
this statement in another place, Jacobi remarks that the science which has 
this interest is different from the true science which has an entirely «:pposite 
interest. Vide Werke, iv., Erste Abth., Vorbericht, pp. xxvii. xxw/4, 


= 


92 APOLOGETICS. 


that science cannot allow the being of God to put an arrest 
on its endeavours to ascertain the causes of existing 
phenomena, or to interdict the carrying of its inquiries as 
far back as possible. If, for example, it thinks it can 
account for the appearance of design in nature without 
postulating a designer, it declines to regard it as a good 
reason for foregoing the attempt that theologians will 
thereby be deprived of a favourite argument for the being 
of God. If, again, science thinks it can establish a doctrine 
of evolution, according to which all existing forms of life 
have arisen by a slow secular process out of a few prim- 
ordial living germs, it refuses to be stopped in its course 
by the consideration that the establishment of such a 
doctrine would leave the Creator so little to do as to 
suggest the thought that He might be dispensed with 
altogether. The scientific man might meet such objections 
by the reply: “If God be put into a corner I cannot help it. 
Nay, if He should be shut out of the universe altogether, I 
still cannot help it. I have no wish to do so: the motive 
of my scientific labour is not a desire to carry on a crusade 
against the existence of God. But as little is it my busi- 
ness to protect that existence from peril. I must go on 
my own course of inquiry, and leave the divine existence 
to look after itself.” 4 

Modern science prosecuted in this spirit: of stony 
indifference to theological interests, or to any interest 
whatever but the ascertainment of truth, has established 
many doctrines, and thrown out not a few hypotheses, 
which have given much comfort to the heart of the 
materialist, and inspired him with great confidence in 
asserting that his theory of the universe may now be 
regarded as conclusively proved. Hence materialism has 


1 On the bearing of evolution on theism, Le Conte remarks: ‘*To the 
deep thinker now and always there is and has been the alternative—materi- 
alism or theism. God operates Nature or Nature operates itself ; but evolu- 
tion puts no new phase on this old question.” —Lvolution and tts Relation to 
Religious Thought, p. 289, 2nd ed, 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. 93 


been much in vogue of late, and has won over to {ts ranks 
many ardent supporters who have devoted themselves to 
its exposition and defence, using for this purpose all the 
materials lying ready to their hands in scientific treatises. 
Germany has been specially prolific in materialistic litera- 
ture. In that land of thinkers every theory has its turn, 
and every subject which engages attention is gone into 
with characteristic thoroughness and unreserve. In English- 
speaking countries men are not supremely interested in 
speculative theories, but give themselves, by preference, to 
patient prosecution of special lines of inquiry, and if the 
results arrived at are, from the theological point of view, 
questionable or suspicious, such aspects of the matter 
under consideration are either quietly ignored, or only 
noticed by a passing word. But in Germany the bearing 
of any particular scientific discovery on the theory of the 
universe is for many the thing of predominant interest, and 
what the Englishman passes over in discreet silence the 
German proclaims from the house-top. Hence the land of 
idealism has taken the lead also in a materialistic propa- 
gandism, which has given birth to many publications of 
various merit, including an elaborate history of materialism 
from the earliest times till now." 

In view of that history, and of the many phases of 
opinion it reveals, in view also of the extent to which 
the story of modern materialism is interwoven with that of 
recent scientific discovery, it seems vain to attempt a state- 
ment and criticism of the materialistic theory of the universe 
within the compass of a single chapter. Yet let us hope 
that the task may not prove so hard as at first it looks. 

What then is the materialistic theory? Briefly and 
rouchly it is this: that to account for all the phenomena 
of nature, including those of life, animal and vegetable, and 
of thought, nothing more is needed than matter and its 
properties. Matter and force have built up the universe, 
the former being the stuff ov‘ of which the structure has 


1 Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, 


94 APOLOGETICS. 


been raised, the latter the architect by whose unconscious 
skill it has been shaped into a cosmos. The world-process 
is throughout an affair of mechanism. The substitute for 
God in this theory is the hyle, matter in its original element- 
ary state, conceived of as existing from eternity, and con- 
sisting of an infinite number of atoms moving about in 
empty space. By this conception of matter as eternal the 
need for a Creator is excluded. Equally unnecessary, 
according to the materialist, is a Divine Being at all stages 
of the process by which the world arose out of the eternal 
atoms. Not even at those critical points in the world- 
process, when life, feeling, and thought first appeared, is it 
necessary to postulate more than matter and the properties 
it possessed before these remarkable phenomena appeared, 
in order to account for them sufficiently. 

The consistent maintenance of this theory would seem 
to require no small measure of audacity, a quality in which, 
it must be acknowledged, the materialist has never been 
lacking. The origin of /ife, even in its most elementary form, 
might well appear a crux to any modest theorist desirous 
to ascertain how far lifeless matter and its properties will 
carry us in the explanation of the world. For the testi- 
mony of experimental science is decidedly against spon- 
taneous generation,—that is, the appearance of life where 
there is no reason to suspect the presence of living germs 
antecedently existing. Yet, in spite of that testimony, 
modern materialists, with one consent, refuse to regard the 
origin of life in a world: in which the phenomenon of life 
had not previously appeared as a crisis demanding the 
supernatural interposition of a Creator. They assume the 
conceivability of the world, its explicability by natural 
causes, throughout, as an axiom, and therefore they look 
on the origin of organisms out of dead matter as possible 
and certain, whether such an event fall within our 
present experience or not. Life must have so arisen in 
our planet, for it is here now, and yet it is certain that 
there once was a time when no life could have existed on 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. 95 


the earth. We may not yet be able to explain the process, 
or to specify the conditions under which atoms of carbon, 
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen combine so as to yield the 
wondrous phenomenon we call life. But we ought not to 
despair of one day discovering the secret, but simply to 
regard it as “a very difficult mechanical problem.”* The 
common faith of materialists in reference to the origin of 
life is expressed by a well-known scientific expert in these 
explicit terms :— 


«Tf it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologi- 
cally-recorded time to the still more remote period when the 
earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions, 
which it can no more see again than a man can recall his 
infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of 
living protoplasm from not living matter. I should expect 
to see it appear under forms of great simplicity, endowed, 
like existing fungi, with the power of determining the forma- 
tion of new protoplasm from such matters as ammonium 
carbonates, oxalates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phos- 
phates, and water, without the aid of light.” ? 


Life once introduced, no crucial difficulty emerges for 
the theorist who undertakes to account for all things by 
matter and its properties, by atoms and their motions, till 
in the onward course of evolution the marvellous phenomena 
of feeling, consciousness, thought make their appearance. 
Apart from these perplexing mysteries, the materialist, by 
aid of Darwin’s theory, can explain the boundless world of 
living beings, with its infinite variety of species, from the 


1 The expression is quoted from Du Bois-Reymond. In his Vortrag, 
Ueber.die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, p. 81, this eminent man of science 
says: ‘It is a mistake to see in the first appearance of living beings upon 
earth or on another planet anything supernatural, anything else than a very 
difficult mechanical problem” (ein tiberaus schwieriges mechanisches Problem). 
This Vortrag is published along with another, Die Sieben Weltrdthsel. 
Among the seven riddles of the world Du Bois-Reymond includes the origin 
of life, but he does not regard it as, like the nature of matter, or the origin 
of feeling, ‘‘ transcendent,” ¢.¢. absolutely insoluble. 

2 Huxley, Critiques and Addresses, p. 239. Similar views are expressed 
by Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, i. 430-4. 


96 APOLOGETICS. 


lowest forms of vegetable and animal life to the highest ~ 
and latest achievement of the evolutionary process, the 
animal that can speak and think called man. Corporeal 
life in all its phases may be resolved into mechanics; but 
conscious life, is that not a puzzle? Feeling, even in its 
most rudimentary manifestations, still more as a phenomenon 
in the vast world of mind opened up to view in the human 
species, can it be explained by the movements of atoms ? 
Surely materialists will hesitate to answer this question in 
the affirmative? Some do, but not all. With character- 
istic boldness, some of the most prominent advocates of the 
theory under consideration maintain that feeling and 
thought are modes of motion. “Thought,” says one, “is 
a motion, a translocation of the cerebral substance; think- 
ing is a necessary and inseparable property of the brain ;” 
and “consciousness itself is but an attribute of matter.”? 
Another asks, “What stronger proof for the necessary 
zonnection of soul and brain can one desire than that 
which the knife of the anatomist yields when it cuts the 
soul to pieces?” A third expresses himself in this 
cynical fashion: “Every student of nature must, if he 
think at all consistently, arrive at the conclusion that all 
those capacities which we comprehend under the name of 
the soul’s activities are only functions of the brain sub- 
stance; or, to express myself here somewhat coarsely, that 
thought stands in the same relation to the brain as the 
gall to the liver or the urine to the kidneys.” ® 

Other writers, materialistic in tendency, shrink from 
such positions, and frankly acknowledge that mental states 
are not explicable in terms of motion; that the phenomena 
of thought and feeling are separated by an impassable gulf 


1 Moleschott, Der Kreislauf des Lebens, pp. 439, 445. 

2 Biichner, Kraft und Stof, 6te Aufl. p. 113. 

8 Vogt, Physiologische Briefe fir Gebildete aller Sténde, p. 206; Kéhler- 
glaube und Wissenschaft, p. 82. The blunt declaration above quoted created 
a great sensation. Du Bois-Reymond, in his paper on the ‘‘ Limits to our 
Knowledge of Nature,” states that it gave rise in the fifties to a sort w 
tournament about the soul (p. 49). 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. 97 


from, while intimately connected with, movements in the 
brain and nervous system. They even affect to treat such 
utterances as those above quoted as mere extravagances not 
demanded by the system. But it is by no means certain 
that the views of the moderate and cautious materialist are 
the more consistent with the theory. The urine-simile may 
be offensive in expression, but it is in essence true to the 
materialistic mode of viewing the world. Is it not the 
very rationale of materialism to resolve the phenomena. of 
mind into phenomena of matter? On this point the most 
competent judges are agreed. Thus Lotze says that 
materialism consists in explaining psychical by physical 
states, thought by motion.1_ And Lange, the historian of 
materialism, represents Strauss as a correct exponent of 
materialism? Yet Strauss, recognised by many of his 
countrymen as the father of modern materialism, treats the 
relation of thought to motion as a question of the conserva- 
tion of force, as the following passage will show :— 


“Tt is not long since the law of the conservation of force 
was discovered, and it will take long to clear up and define 
its application to the conversion of heat into motion and of 
motion into heat. But the time cannot be far off when they 
will begin to make application of the law to the problem of 
feeling and thinking. If under certain conditions motion 
changes itself into heat, why should there not also be con- 
ditions under which it changes itself into sensation? The 
conditions, the apparatus for the purpose, we have in the 
brain and nervous system of the higher animals, and in those 
organs of the lower animals which take their place. On the 
one side the nerve is touched and set into internal movement, 
on the other a feeling, a perception, takes place, a thought 
arises ; and inversely the feeling and the thought on the way 
outward translate themselves into motion of the members, 
When Helmholtz says: in the generation of heat through 
rubbing and pushing the motion of the whole mass passes 
over into a motion of its smallest parts; inversely in the 
production of driving power through heat the motion of the 


1 Mikrokosmus, i. 168. 
2 Geschichte des Materialismus, ii. 583. 
G 


98 APOLOGETICS. 


smallest parts passes over into a motion of the whole mass— 
I ask: is this anything essentially different; is the above 
account of the connection between the movement of the body 
and the thought of the mind not the necessary continuation 
of that law? One may say I speak of things I do not under- 
stand. Good, but others will come who do understand, and 
who have also understood me.” * | 


Strauss was not in the technical sense 4 man of science, 
but few are better able to judge what belongs to a con- 
nected system of theoretic thought. Those who hesitate to 
apply to feeling and thought the law of the conservation of 
force may be wiser men than he, but they are less con- 
sistent materialists. It is as incumbent on materialism to 
maintain that thought or consciousness is a mode of motion 
as it is to maintain that life in its primordial forms origin- 
ated in lifeless matter? All attempts to formulate a 
materialistic doctrine without accepting the former of these 
two positions amount to a virtual abandonment of the 
theory. Among these falls to be classed the conception 
of psychical and physical phenomena as the attributes of 
“one substance, with two sets of properties, two sides, the 
physical and the mental, a double-faced unity” *—a modern 
reproduction of Spinoza’s thought. Another favourite way 
of meeting the difficulty 1s to introduce into the component 
elements of matter the attributes of mind—not merely life, 
after the manner of the ancient hylozoists,* but conscious- 
ness, feeling, “ mind-stuff.”® Of course it is easy to bring 
out of matter what you have once put into it, and to find 
in it so endowed the “ promise and potency ” of the highest 


1 Der alte und der neue Glaube, p. 211. 

2 Lange remarks that the special case of the motions named rational must 
be explained from the general laws of all motion, else nothing is explained. 
Geschichte, i. 20. 

8 Bain, Mind and Body, p. 196. 

4 On the views of the hylozoic atheists or corporealists, as represented by 
Strabo Lampsacenus, vide Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the 
Universe, i. 237-41. 

5 Clifford, Lectures and Essays, ii. 85. **Mind-stuff is the reality which 
we perceive as matter.” 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY, 99 


spiritual life. But to ascribe to matter feeling and thought 
is to abandon rather than to defend materialism. A third 
conceivable method of making the problem easy would be 
to deny, if that were possible, the existence of psychical 
states, at least as phenomena demanding scientific explana- 
tion. This device seems to be hinted at in these sentences 
of Lange: “ Feeling is not another member of the chain of 
organic changes, but, as it were, the consideration of any 
one of these from another side. We come here upon a 
limit of materialism, but only because we carry it through 
with the strictest consequence. We are of the opinion that 
-in feeling outside and beside the nerve-processes there is 
hardly anything to seek; only these processes themselves 
have a wholly different mode of manifestation, viz. that 
which the individual calls feeling.” It seems scarcely worth 
while to formulate such a statement unless one can dispense 
with such qualifying phrases as “hardly” and “as it were.” 

Such, in brief, is the physical aspect of materialism, 
Turning now to the ethical side of the theory, it is unneces- 
sary to say that of course the materialist repudiates all 
belief in human freedom. Men, in his view, are what Des- 
cartes held the lower animals to be, automata, only not 
unconscious ones, and not without an idea that they are 
voluntary agents. “We are,” writes Mr. Huxley, “con- 
scious automata, endowed with free will in the only 
intelligible sense of this much-abused term, inasmuch as 
in many respects we are able to do as we like; but, none 
the less, parts of the great series of causes and effects 
which, in unbroken continuity, composes that which is, and 
has been, and shall be, the sum of existence.’2 The con- 
cession here made to free will does not amount to much; 
for the likings of men are the result of causes over which 
they have no control. We do what we like, and we like 
what we must. In proof of the illusory character of 
human freedom, materialists appeal to the results of the 


1 Geschichte des Materialismus, p. 374. 
? Science and Culture, and other Hesays, pp. 289, 240, 


100 APOLOGETICS. 


modern science of statistics, according to which it is 
approximately determinable how many out of a given 
number of men will commit crimes in a year, and even 
what will be the percentage for each species of crite, and 
for the mode in which it will be committed. It is held 
that it would be impossible to frame such formule unless 


there were physical causes at work determining the actions 


of men with as much certainty as the occurrence of eclipses. 

There is no charge to which materialism seems more 
justly liable than that it renders anything like a fixed code 
of morals impossible. The logic of a system which denies 
freedom and regards human action as the product of causes 
over which the actor has no control, appears to justify the 
conclusion that all actions are equally right or legitimate, 
those of the man who is the slave of animal passion not 
less than those of the man who obeys reason and lives a 
sober, benevolent life. Conduct is the necessary result of 
nature, and as is the nature so will be the quality of the 
conduct. In one case the quality may be higher than in 
another, but that constitutes no ground for condemning the 
man whose conduct is judged to be inferior, for it is as 
reasonable as it is inevitable that nature varying conduct 
should vary accordingly. 

The materialists of last century were not at all concerned 
to deny this consequence of their system, but frankly 
acknowledged that morality was a purely personal affair, 
and that the only rule of conduct that could be laid down 
was: Every man to his taste. Every man, it was argued, 
desires to be happy, but no man can be happy at the 
bidding of another; therefore let every man pursue the 
common aim in his own way. If one think he can best 
reach the goal by what is called virtue, let him do so by 
all means. If another think he can attain happiness by a 
life of libertinage, he has an equal right to follow his bent. 
If a third has come to feel that happiness is no longer 
possible to him on any terms, he may, if he pleases, hang 
himself. In the spirit of such free and easy morality 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. 101 


Hume defended suicide. “A hair, a fly, an insect, is able 
to destroy this mighty being whose life is of such import- 
ance. Is it an absurdity to suppose that human prudence 
may lawfully dispose of what depends on such insignificant 
causes? It would be no crime in me to divert the Nile 
or Danube from its course, were I able to effect such pur- 
poses. Where, then, is the crime of turning a few ounces 
of blood from their natural channel?”! Even eighteenth 
century materialism might have something to say by way 
of reply to this cynical argument for the right of the 
individual to do with his life as he pleased. It might 
mildly suggest that every man owed something to others, 
to his fainily, to his friends, to the state. It might go so 
far as to lay down the rule: the interest of the state the 
supreme law for the individual. But how uncertain the 
code of morals based on this principle might be, we may 
learn from Helvetius, who argued in favour of libertinage 
as useful to France, and reminded purists that it was to the 
mud of the Nile that Eeypt owed its fertility.? 

Some modern materialists are not less frank than Hume 
or Helvetius, but others show a noticeable anxiety to 
obviate the prejudice against their system arising from a 
consideration of its relation to morality, by discovering an 
objective basis for moral distinctions that lifts conduct out 
of the region of individual caprice. And, of course, the 
materialist is quite entitled to use for this purpose all that 
is consistent with his conception of man as a being whose 
conduct is necessarily determined by his corporeal organisa- 
tion. With this conception it is impossible for him to rise 
above egoism, but it is competent for him to press the 
question, What is the Zgo? What am I? What is the actual 
nature of my physical organisation as determined by the process 


1 From Unpublished Essays, Vide Hume’s Works, by Green & Grose, 
ii. 410. 

2 Oeuvres, Tome Premier, p. 304. Helvetius regarded the vices of the 
libertine as an inevitable accompaniment of luxury, and the evil incidental 
to them as quite insignificant compared to the wealth which fosters them, 


102 APOLOGETICS. 


of evolution? It is also competent to insist on the distinction 
between a healthy and a morbid condition of the organisation. 

Taking his stand upon the latter, the materialist may 
say: It does not follow from my theory that what we call 
a criminal is as much in his right as what we call a 
virtuous man. The criminal is a man whose brain and 
nervous system are more or less diseased ; the virtuous man 
is one whose whole body is in a normal state of health. 
On this distinction between disease and health moral 
distinctions rest; into this distinction they ultimately 
resolve themselves, and by this distinction they are 
justified. Will is the necessary result of a condition 
of the brain produced by external influences which may be 
either normal or abnormal, and according as ‘it is the one 
or the other is conduct virtuous or vicious, wise or foolish. 
It may be wrong to condemn or punish a criminal, the 
proper mode of treating him may not be to put him in 
prison or to inflict on him stripes, but to put him under 
medical care in “a moral hospital”; but it is not contrary 
to my theory to recognise moral distinctions as having a 
foundation in physics. A materialist may speak of lying, 
deceit, murder, theft, inordinate sexual appetite as evils, 
just as a Christian does, only not for the same reasons.’ 

Of much more interest and importance is the other line 
of inquiry along which materialists may seek, in accord- 
ance with their principles, to discover a stable basis for 
ethical distinctions, as generally recognised among civilised 
men. ‘The question here is, What is the nature of the 


1 The study of criminal anthropology has made great progress in recent 
years, and already it has begun to exercise an influence on criminal juris- 
prudence in the direction of practically setting aside the idea of culpability, 
while of course recognising the reasonableness and necessity of social reaction 
in self-defence against the criminal, in proportion to his dangerousness as 
distinct from his guilt. A good popular guide to the literature of this 
subject and its various aspects is supplied in the work of Havelock Ellis, 
he Criminal, 1890. The lead has been taken by Italians, and especially 
by Lombroso of Turin. The subject and the modern method of treating it 
have no necessary connection with materialism. 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. 103 


nervous organisation which I have received by inheritance 
from a long line of ancestors? More definitely, Can I 
discover in it any principle which raises us above mere 
vulgar egoism into the region of that benevolent regard to 
others with which human morality may be said to begin ? 
Now it is open to the materialist to point to the feeling 
of sympathy as such a principle, claiming for it to be as 
natural, as much the outcome of our organisation, as 
hunger, or any other animal instinct ; much weaker in the 
ordinary man than the imperious appetites common to him 
with the brutes, but not less than they a real feature of 
human nature as now constituted. If the question be 
asked, Why should man have a fellow-feeling with others? 
he may reply, Why should man not be a social animal like 
the bee or the beaver? Of course, given the social nature 
a regard to the interests of society is as natural as a regard 
to individual interest. But the materialist may not con- 
tent himself with a reference to the existence of a social 
instinct in other parts of the animal kingdom. He may 
undertake to point out circumstances connected with the 
evolution of the human race which tend to develop into 
exceptional strength the social affections which form the 
foundation of the noblest morality. In this connection 
stress might be laid on the influence of the senses making 
men acquainted with the experiences of beings whom they 
recognised as like themselves. Thus, it might be con- 
tended, “the virtues gradually came into men through the 
eyes and the ears.” “Through the connection of the senses 
gradually, in course of millenniums, a community of the 
human race in all interests is established, resting on this 
that each individual lives through the destiny of the whole 
in the harmony or disharmony of his own feelings and 
thoughts.” Or, again, the humanising effect of prolonged 
infancy, and dependence on parents, in the human species, 


1 Vide Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, i. 379, 380. Lange thinks 
that in this way might be founded a materialistic moral philosophy which 
is still a desideratum. 


104 APOLOGETICS. 


giving occasion for the formation of family affections, might 
be insisted on as powerfully contributing to the moralisation 
of the race? In short, the whole ethics of naturalism, as 
developed by the modern school of evolutionary philo- 
sophy, might be utilised for the purpose of showing how, 
compatibly with a purely materialistic conception of the 
universe, an ethical system may be held scientific in its basis 
and satisfactory in its results. ! 


A few words, finally, as to the religious aspect of 


materialism. It may appear mockery or banter to speak 
of a religious aspect in connection with a system which 
recognises no God but atoms, and out of these constructs 
the universe of being animate and inanimate. Was it not 
the very aim of ancient materialism, as represented by 
Epicurus and Lucretius, to get rid of religion as the source 
of infinite mischief to mankind? But contemporary 
materialists recognise the fact that man is a religious being, 
and are not willing to be thought indifferent to that side 
of human nature, or incapable of making some provision 
for it. What provision then do they make? God having 
been eliminated, there remains as a possible object of 
worship the universe. Universe-worship in detail, after 
the manner of polytheists, is not possible in a scientific 
era, but the most advanced scientist and philosopher may, 
it is thought, still bow in reverence before the universe as 
a whole, conceived of as revealing to the instructed eye an 
esthetic, a rational, and a moral order; the first appealing 
to and satisfying the sense of beauty and harmony, the 
second supplying the intellect with ample materials for de- 
vout contemplation, the third embodying and approximately 
realising the idea of the good, and offering to the conscience 
a sufficiently satisfactory substitute for a righteous God? 
This new cult, adapted to the tastes of artists, scientists, 


1Mr. Fiske has worked out this line of thought in Outlines of Cosmic 
Philosophy, vol. ii. chap. xxii. 

2 Vide Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube, p. 142; also Seeley’s 
Natural Religion. 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. 105 


and moralists, who can no longer believe in the old- 
fashioned anthropomorphic Deity, may not commend itself 
to all materialists. To some it may appear too optimistic, 
ascribing to the universe a character it does not deserve, 
and investing it with qualities that have no place in the 
realm of reality, but only in the poetic imagination of the 
worshipper. The world, it may be said, is not a unity 
except in our thought, nor is it really full of order, esthetic, 
rational, and righteous, except for the man of optimistic 
temper who creates a perfect world as a congenial home 
for his spirit. The unity and the order are mere ‘ideals. 
For those who thus think the ideals themselves may 
become gods. Religion may be relegated to the realm of 
poetry, and men may gratify their devout feelings by 
dreaming of a world of truth, beauty, and goodness which 
never has had and never will have any real existence. 

In proceeding to criticise this bold and pretentious 
theory, I commence by remarking that it constructs the 
universe out of it knows not what. Materialism begins 
with an unknown quantity, and ends with an insoluble 
problem. What is this matter of which all things consist, 
and by whose motions all phenomena are explained? Is 
it atoms, or is it force, or is it both, and how are the two 
related? Whence comes the motion that builds up the 
universe? Is it inherent in matter, or does it come to it 
from without? These are unanswerable questions. Science, 
even when biassed in favour of materialism, is obliged to 
confess two limits: ignorance of the ultimate elements of 
the universe, and the impossibility of accounting for. 
consciousness.” The further question may even be asked, 
Ts it quite certain there is such a thing as matter? Of 
the two substances which have been supposed to exist, 
mind and matter, which is intrinsically the more probable? 


1 Vide Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, ii. 644. 

2 Vede Du Bois-Reymond’s Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens. Du 
Bois-Reymond recognises two insurmountable limits: the nature of matter 
and the origin of feeling, 


106 APOLOGETICS. 


If we must have a monistic system of the universe, why 
should a materialistic monism be preferred to a spiritual 
or idealistic? Is there not force in the observation of 
Lotze: “Among all the errors of the human mind it has 
always seemed to me the strangest that it could come to 
doubt its own existence, of which alone it has direct ex- 
perience, or to take it at second hand as the product of an 
external nature which we know only indirectly, only by 


means of the knowledge of the very mind to which we 


would fain deny existence” ?* Even Lange, the historian 
of materialism, in sympathy with the system, though 
conscious of its weakness in certain directions, is con- 
strained to acknowledge that while it remains for material- 
ism an insurmountable difficulty to explain how out of the 
motions of matter a conscious feeling can arise, it is, on 


the other hand, not difficult to think that our whole idea ~ 


of matter and its motions is the result of an organisation 
purely spiritual in its nature.” 

As to the manner in which materialists deal with the 
problem of the origin of life, it is not necessary that the 
Christian theist should meet dogmatism with dogmatism. 
That topic offers certainly a suitable occasion for remark- 
ing on the tendency to dogmatise on disputed points 
characteristic of the advocates of the materialistic theory. 
Science leaves spontaneous generation an open question, 
but the materialist does not. He cannot afford to do so. 
He must assume that life under favourable conditions can 
emerge out of lifeless matter by a purely natural process, 
for if that were not true his theory would break down, and 
“he would be forced to recognise the creative hand of God. 
On the other hand, the believer in God is under no neces- 
sity to maintain as matter of religious faith the opposite 
thesis. His faith is that God is the cause of the world 
and all things therein; but he is not tied to any particular 
view as to the method of creation. He can admit that the 


1 Mikrokosmus, i. 296 (Eng. trans. i. 268). 
2 Geschichte des Materialismus, ii, 430. 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. 107 


creation in its incipient stage would to an onlooker have 
had the appearance of things coming out of an invisible 
into a visible state, and -that no unmistakable trace of the 
divine agent would be observable. In like manner he 
can admit that when life first appeared it would seem to 
be a case of spontaneous generation, that it would be 
impossible to prove the contrary to one who denied it, or 
to force him to recognise in the new phenomenon the 
presence and power of the Creator. He does not need, in 
order to magnify the wonder and make it appear dignus 
vindice nodus, to insist on the mysterious character of life, 
on the supposed difference between organic and inorganic 
chemistry, or to contend for the existence of a peculiar 
life-foree. It is enough for him, with the Psalmist, to 
believe that with God is the fountain of life. It is not 
necessary in maintaining this faith to regard the first 
emergence of life as due to the immediate and absolute 
causality of God apart from all natural conditions. We 
may accept the view which steadily gains ground that the 
antecedent state of things contained the needful preparation 
for the appearance of the new phenomenon, and that its 
origination was simply the next step onwards in the steady 
march of the great evolutionary process. This view may 
eliminate miracle, or the purely supernatural, but not the 
divine activity which underlies the whole. 

The relation of materialism to the problem of conscious- 
ness possesses exceptional interest and significance. There 
can be no doubt what philosophical consistency requires 
of the theory. It is bound to regard consciousness as a 
phenomenon ultimately resolvable, if one only knew how, 
into a mode of motion. There can be as little doubt that 
the feat is not only difficult but impossible. Thought is 
accompanied by agitation of the brain; there is a close 
correspondence between mental states and antecedent or 
accompanying movements in the nervous system; but the 
mental and the physical series of states are distinct and 
irreducible into each other. Here it is emphatically true 


108 APOLOGETICS. 


that the consistency of materialism is its overthrow. | The 
fact is confessed by those who in recent times have 
suggested modified forms of materialism; the confession 
is indeed the chief value of their suggestions. Mr. Bain’s 
hypothesis of “one substance with two sets of properties,” 
is a frank admission that motion cannot be transmuted 
into mind. As for the hypothesis itself, it has little to 
recommend it. It may very reasonably be asked whether 
it be scientific to conceive of two sets of utterly heterogen- 
eous qualities as inhering in the same substance. It is 
doubtless the interest of science to bring all phenomena, if 


possible, under a single principle, but it is still more its 


interest to recognise a plurality of grounds when the 
phenomena cannot be traced to one source, or ultimately 
reduced to one kind.! A soul, though inaccessible to the 
senses, is therefore a reasonable postulate. But theists do 
not need to dogmatise on the soul question, any more than 
on the question as to the origin of life. They may take 
up this attitude: What matter is and what soul is I cannot 
tell, Whether either or both exist I know not. Whether 
one substance can possess properties so diverse as those of 
mind and matter, I do not. undertake to say. That the 
hypothesis of a soul or spirit as the substratum of mental 
phenomenon does not explain all difficulties, and even 
introduces new ones, I am aware. All I know is that the 
phenomena of mind are here, constituting a whole spiritual 
world in which materialism has no part. I magnify this 
world, and refuse to think less of it because it may have 
been reached by insensible gradations, proceeding from 
inanimate matter to life in its most rudimentary vegetable 
form, from vegetable life to the simplest form of animal 
life, and thence onwards to man.2_ My spiritual life has as 

1 Lotze, Mikrokosmus, i. 165, 166. 

2 Some theists unhesitatingly accept the doctrine of the evolution of mind 
out of matter. Thus Le Conte says: ‘‘I believe that the spirit of man was 
developed out of the anima, or conscious principle of animals, and that this 


again was developed out of the lower forms of life-force, and this in its turn 
out of the chemical and physical forces of nature, and that at @ certain 


‘ * ve 
2 le ae 7 
i eat anil 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. 109 


much value for me as if it had come to me immediately 
from God. And I believe it has equal value for God, and 
that He will not suffer it to perish, Whether mind-life 
be possible apart from a bodily organism I cannot tell. It 
may be that the brain is so needful to the soul that the 
latter is reduced to the condition of mere latent potency 
in the disembodied state.1 But there is no reason to think 
that death is the destruction of the thinking principle, and 
whatever is necessary to the full exercise of its powers in 
a future state God will provide. 

The other form of prudent or moderate materialism, that 
which endows the elements of matter with spiritual 
qualities, is an equally decisive, though not equally frank, 
confession that the consistent thoroughgoing application 
of materialistic principles is impracticable. Epicurus 
ascribed to atoms no qualities save size, figure, and weight, 
and, according to Lange, this view forms one of the stand- 
ing features of genuine materialism. “ With the assumption 
of inner conditions you turn atoms into monads, and pass 
over into idealism or pantheistic naturalism.”? It is, 
however, easier for a German philosopher to see this than 
for an English scientist, who’ may discern in matter the 
promise and potency of all that exists, and define matter as 
the mysterious thing by which all has been accomplished, 
without being aware that he may thus be combining two 
incompatible theoretical view points; first making matter 
everything, then to fit it for its gigantie task turning 
matter into spirit, or at least making spiritual qualities 
a part of its miscellaneous outfit, Such a “see-saw 
doctrine, which now touches solid ground and now escapes 


stage in this gradual development, viz. with man, it acquired the property 
of immortality, precisely as it now, in the individual history of each man 
at a certain stage, acquires the capacity of abstract thought.”—Zvolution 
and its Relation to Religious Thought, p. 318, 2nd ed. 

1 This is the view of Ulrici. Vide his Gott und die Natur, pp. 329, 330. 
A similar view was held by the late Archbishop Whately. Vide his View 
of the Scripture Revelations of a Future State, Lecture 4. 

2 Geschichte des Materialismus, i. 80. 


110 APOLOGETICS. 


it,’1 is a not uncommon feature of English scientific 
materialism, having its origin in part in a national indiffer- 
ence to philosophic consistency and proneness to eclectic 
habits of thought. One wonders, indeed, how persons 
accustomed to scientific methods of inquiry, however 
defective in philosophy, could identify themselves with 
such crude speculations as to the ultimate nature of the 
hyle. What is gained by ascribing to elementary matter, 
“mind-stuff,” will, thought, feeling? There is no ground in 
observation for the assertion, and no evidence as to how the 
consciousness of the human organism as a whole arises out 
of the obscure feelings of the component parts. That matter 
feels is simply an inference from the general axiom that 
whatever is in the effect must have been in the cause, or that 
whatever comes out at the end of the evolutionary process 
must have been there from the beginning. And granting 
both the inference and the axiom, what do they amount to ? 
Simply to the abandonment of materialism and a transition 
to its opposite, spiritualism. Materialism means explaining 
the highest by the lowest, the end by the beginning, mind by 
motion. Spiritualism means explaining the lowest by the high- 
est, the beginning by the end, matter and motion by mind.” 
On the ethical and religious aspects of materialism it is 
not needful to remark at great length. With every wish 
to be fair and even generous, it may truly be asserted 
that materialistic ethics must differ seriously from those 
of Christianity. We have seen of what complexion they 
were in the eighteenth century. It may be thought that 
the modern doctrine of evolution has greatly altered the 
situation for the better. “But does it after all make such 
a difference? It may be affirmed that the evolutionary 
process tends to develop in a steadily increasing degree 
1 So Martineau expresses himself in reference to the materialism of Pro- 
fessor Tyndal. Vide his able Essay on “‘ Modern Materialism in its Attitude 

towards Theology,” in Hssays, Reviews, and Addresses, iv. p. 206. 
2 Vide on this Professor Caird’s Critical Philosophy of Kant, ii. 33-35 ; 


also Professor Jones, Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher, 
pp. 202-212. 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. EL 


right moral sentiments, and corresponding right conduct, 
and that we may look for a golden age when men generally 
will think and act wisely and well. Be it so; but the 
evolutionary process has not reached that stage yet, and 
meantime the human race consists of individuals of very 
diverse feelings and characters. Some are wise, some 
foolish, some generous, some selfish, some temperate, some 
self-indulgent. What ground is there on materialistic 
principles for condemning the foolish, selfish, and self- 
indulgent, or for their condemning themselves? They 
are what they have been made; they act by necessity of 
nature; they cannot be other than they are. They are 
physically different from the wise, generous, and temperate, 
but not ethically, in the sense of being the proper subjects 
of moral reprobation; for sin cannot be imputed where 
there is no freedom. They cannot even be justly treated 
as diseased. What ground is there for thinking that the 
brain of every selfish or violent man is in a morbid con- 
dition? The quantity of brain and the proportions of the 
various parts of the cerebral organ may vary, as between 
the virtuous and the vicious, but the organ may neverthe- 
less be equally healthy in both classes. The brain of a 
wolf or tiger is not to be considered unhealthy because he 
is ferocious. But on the Darwinian theory it is to be 
expected that there should be men with a wolf-like or 
tiger-like constitution of the nervous system, and when 
this leads them to commit acts of violence it is no more 
an evidence of diseased brain than similar acts in the case 
of the wild beasts whose dispositions they inherit. Then, as 
Ulrici-has remarked, the number of men who are thoroughly . 
righteous and good is comparatively small. But the test 
of soundness is naturally that which is usual, and the 
unusual and exceptional the evidence of an abnormal 
diseased condition. From these premises the conclusion 
would be that the healthy state of the brain is to be found 
in the sinner, and the diseased state in the saint. 
1 Gott und der Mensch, ii. 12. 


Lie APOLOGETICS. 


There appears to be good reason to doubt whether 
biological or ev »lutionary ethics bring us into the region 
of ethics at all. But waiving this, it may be observed that 
the moral standard supplied by modern science is a shifting 
one. There is no such thing as “eternal and immutable 
morality.” Morality has no absolute worth irrespective of 
interests and opinions. Some modern materialists, indeed, 
frankly own and glory in the variableness of right and 
wrong from age to age, according to the condition of a tribe 
or nation. That entirely diverse ideas of right and wrong, 
even in fundamental matters, are among the possibilities 
of evolution is admitted by the most careful expositors of 
the doctrine. Thus Darwin, who makes conscience an 
outgrowth of the social instinct, remarks : 


“T do not wish to maintain that any strictly social animal, 
if its intellectual faculties were to become as active and as 
hivhly developed as in man, would acquire exactly the same 
moral sense as ours. In the same manner as various animals 
have some sense of beauty, though they admire widely different 
objects, so they might have a sense of right and wrong, 
though led by it to follow widely different lines of conduct. 
If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared 
under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can 
hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like 
the worker bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, 
and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and 
no one would think of interfering.”?} 


This is one illustration of what “Darwinism in morals” 
might conceivably mean. According to the same high 
authority another might, be the adoption of the policy of 
improving the human race by killing off the weak: 


“With savages the weak in body or mind are soon elimi- 
nated, and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous 
state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do 
our utmost to check the process of elimination. ... No 
one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals 
will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race. 

1 The Descent of Man, p. 99, 2nd ed. 


THE MATERIALISTIC THEORY. 113 


It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly 
directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but, 
excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so 
ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” ! 


All risk of a return to the savage mode of dealing with 
the weak may be considered to be excluded by the tendency 
of civilisation to develop humane affection and an increasing 
sense of the value of those qualities which constitute the 
difference between a civilised man anda savage. Granting 
this, are we equally safe against an anti-Christian ethical 
drift in the shape of a tendency to underestimate personal 
virtues in comparison with those which make for the 
material interests of society? It has been supposed that 
the great merit of Christ was that He gave currency to the 
“method of inwardness,” taught men, that is to say, to seek 
their happiness within through the practice of self-denial. 
But the advocates of a form of socialism which describes 
itself as “atheistic humanism” tell us that Christ’s teach- 
ing in this aspect was the reverse of meritorious, and 
ostentatiously declare that they have no sympathy with 
the “morbid eternally-revolving-in-upon-itself, transcendent 
morality of the gospel discourses.”2 They encourage in 
the industrial class total disregard of the ethical ideal 
embodied, say, in the Sermon on the Mount. “The work- 
man of the great industry has never, as a rule, paid much 
attention to his soul, to the vrai, the beau, the bien, as 
embodied in his character. Personal holiness has never 
been his ethical aim. . . . The idea ofa ‘holy’ working man 
is even grotesque. The virtues which the working classes 
at. their best have recognised have ‘been rather those of 
integrity, generosity, sincerity, good comradeship, than 
those of ‘meekness,’ ‘purity, ‘piety,’ ‘self -abnegation,’ 
and the like; in short, social and objective virtues—those 
immediately referable to the social environment—rather 
than those individual and subjective ones referable to the 

1 Descent of Man, pp. 188, 134. 
* Bax, The Religion of Socialism, p. 97. 
H 


114 APOLOGETICS. 


personality as such.”! This is ethical materialism for the 
million. Its error does not lie in its care for the interests of 
society. Christ cared for society. He laid upon His dis- 
ciples the duty of being the salt of the earth. The question 
is, What qualifies for that high vocation ? Wherewith 
shall society be salted, if not by the personal inward 
moralities inculcated by Jesus ? 

Materialism popularised would probably be not less 
irreligious than morally lax. Against the worship of the 
universe, as expounded by Strauss, nothing need be said. 
Better worship the wniversum than nothing at all. Indeed, 
as has been remarked, Strauss invests his wniversum with 
such worshipful attributes that his religious attitude does 
not greatly differ from that of deism, and it seems little 
more than a matter of taste whether the object of worship 
be called God, or Nature, or the All?? The trouble is, 
that for one who has discarded a living God it is difficult 
to think so well of the world as is necessary for the sincere 
practice of this new cult. Does not scientific materialism 
insist on the defectiveness of the world in every sphere of 
existence as a proof that it cannot have proceeded from an 
almighty, intelligent, and beneficent Maker? The world, 
on its showing, is not full of reason, beauty, and goodness, 
but largely irrational, hideous, immoral, suggesting a pessi- 
mistic rather than an optimistic view of its constitution 
and destiny. What then, must religion be given up for 
want of anything worth worshipping? No; there is one 
refuge left—Ideals! You may dream of a world rational, 
fair, making for righteousness, though the world of reality 
be far otherwise. You may be optimist in feeling, though 
pessimist in creed under compulsion of facts. You not 
only may; you must. There is, we are assured, an innate 


1 Bax, The Ethics of Socialism, p. 16. Similar views are taught by the 
leaders of the social democratic movement in Germany. They practically 
deny Christ’s doctrine that life is more than meat, and assert that food and 
raiment, not the kingdom of God and its righteousness, are man’s chief end. 

2 Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, ii, 543. 


THE DEISTIC THEORY. 115 


tendency in the. human spirit to create for itself a har- 
monious ideal world, and in this perfect world of fancy to 
find solace amid the struggles and miseries of life. This 
is religion; legitimate and praiseworthy, so long as the 
pleasant fond dream does not crystallise into an earnest 
faith in a living Providence, making all things work 
together for good !! 


CHAPTER V. 
THE DEISTIC THEORY, 


LITERATURE. —Leland’s View of the Principal Deistical 
Writers; Lechler’s Geschichte des Englischen Deismus; 
Noack’s Freidenker in der Religion; Zeller, Geschichte der 
Deutschen Philosophie, 1873 ; Rousseau’s Hmile; Kant, Re- 
ligion innerhalb der Grenzen der blosen Vernunft ; Butler’s 
Analogy of Religion; John Stuart Mill, Three Essays in 
Religion ; Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. 
Vide also list at head of Section 3, Chapter I., Introduction. 


The deistic mode of regarding the great objects of 
philosophic contemplation—God, man, and the world— 
differs widely from that of either of the systems previously 
considered. Deism recognises a God distinct from the 
world, who stands to it in the relation of creator to 
creation. It not only recognises such a distinction between 
God and the world, but lays exaggerated emphasis upon it, 
making God stand outside the world He has made, a mere 
spectator of the universe He has ushered into being, rigidly 
excluded from all subsequent interference with the course 
of nature He Himself established at the first. The 
Creator of the world it conceives of as a being possessing 
self-conscious intelligence and will, capable of forming 
designs and of executing them with consummate skill. 
The world it regards as a theatre in which the divine 

1 Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, ii, 544. 


116 APOLOGETICS. 


wisdom is conspicuously displayed. To the eye of the 
deist, as to the eye of the Psalmist, the heavens declare the 
glory of God, and not less the earth and all the creatures 
therein. Universal nature shows forth the glory of its 
Author, the glory of His wisdom and of His goodness. For 
these are the two attributes chiefly insisted on in the 
scheme of thought now to be considered. God is first of 
all good, a benevolent Being having only one end in view, 
to make the sentient creatures He has brought into being 
happy. “The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord;” 
“Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness!” 
—to such scriptural utterances the deist said Amen with 
all his heart. The divine wisdom he saw in the manner 
in which the Author of nature has arranged all things so - 
as to promote the happiness of His creatures, and especially 
of man. Hence the evidences of beneficent design skilfully 
worked out were for many deists a favourite theme of 
study and discourse. 

The deistic view of man differs not less widely from that 
of pantheism or materialism. Man, as the deist conceives 
him, is a very important being. He is the chief of God’s 
works, the lord and the end of creation. He is endowed 
with sublime gifts, reason, conscience, freedom. And he 
has before him a splendid prospect, a blessed immortality. 
He does not always make the best use of his powers, 
and behave himself as becomes one destined to live for 
ever. But this is only his infirmity ; his faults are but 
pardonable errors which an indulgent Maker will readily 
overlook; errors into which he is led by “this muddy 
vesture of decay ” that for the present grossly closeth in the 
celestial element of reason, from which, therefore, he will be 
emancipated by death, when his soul will remount to its 
native sphere to mingle with pure spirits that delight in virtue. 

This sketch of deism, in contrast to pantheism and 
materialism, suggests at the same time the characteristics 
by which, while apparently allied to, it is really dis- 
tinguished from, Christianity. Four features have to be 


THE DEISTIC THEORY. 117 


noted in this connection—the conception of God’s relation 
to the world characteristic of deism ; its extreme optimism ; 
its lenient view of human shortcoming; and its pagan view 
of the future life. The first of these topics will be most 
conveniently considered in next chapter in connection with 
the modern descendant and representative of deism which 
goes by the name of “speculative theism.” The other 
three may be dealt with here. 

1. The optimistic tendencies of deists were revealed by 
the use they made of the teleological argument, and the 
views they expressed on such subjects as those of provi- 
dence, prayer, and miracle. 

As already hinted, it was characteristic of deistical 
- writers, especially in Germany, to dwell with much com- 
placency on the evidences of beneficent design everywhere 
discernible in the world. To point out the manifold proofs 
of the goodness of God in providing for human happiness 
was one of the pet tasks to which the Aufklaérung philo- 
sophers addressed themselves. Arguments were drawn from 
all parts of nature, and books appeared on bronto-theology, 
seismo-theology, litho-theology, phyto-theology, melitto- 
theology, etc. Some of the arguments were such as to 
provoke a smile. One writer found proofs of the divine 
goodness in the important facts that cherries do not ripen 
in the cold of winter, when they do not taste at all so 
well, and that grapes do not ripen in the heat of summer, 
which would convert the new wine into vinegar! One 
can understand how Kant lost conceit of a method of 
demonstrating the divine existence which had degenerated 
into such utter bathos, and looked about for arguments of 
a more dignified description. 

There is nothing in the deistic conception of God in His 
relation to the world that involves of necessity a denial 
of divine interference in human affairs. Pantheism and 
materialism both necessarily exclude the supernatural, for 
a God distinct from the course of nature has no existence 

1 Zeller, Geschichte der Deutschen Philosophie, p. 311, 


118 APOLOGETICS. 


on these theories. But deism does believe in a Supreme Being 
distinct from the world; and, in the creation of the world 
by His power at the first, it recognises a stupendous miracle. 


But if a miracle could be wrought once, why not a second ~ 


time, or any number of times, as might seem desirable ? 


The answer of deists to this question was, in substance, — 
this: Miracle is excluded, now that nature is In existence, — 
not by any want of power in God, but by the absence of — 


any occasion. Nature, God’s handiwork, is a perfect con- 


trivance; and all that is needed is that God sustain it in 4 


being, and for the rest leave it to its course. To intro- 
duce the disturbing element of miraculous interference 


would be to pay a compliment to the power of Deity at — 


the expense of His wisdom. God made all things so good 
at the first that the best thing He can do is to let the 
world alone? On similar grounds, a special providence 


was denied by some deists, eg. Bolingbroke, who thought ’ 


that the “ordinary course of things, preserved and con- 
ducted by a general providence, is sufficient to confirm 


what the law of nature and reason teaches us,’—that is, f 


that to do right is for our advantage, and to do wrong for 
our ultimate loss. It must here be remarked, however, 
that deists were not all of one mind on this subject; and 


the same remark applies to other topics. Our account of © 


deistic tendencies, therefore, is to be regarded as a descrip- 
tion of average deism, leaving room for individual varia- 
tions. This statement applies especially to deistic views 


on the subject of prayer. On this important subject — 
English deists gave an uncertain sound, possibly due to — 
prudential considerations, Rousseau’s utterance, referred — 
to in a former chapter? is the most explicit and the most — 


1 Vide Lechler’s Geschichte des Englischen Deismus, p. 821, where he gives : 
an account of the views of Annet, who gave the apologists considerable — 


trouble. Annet argued, ‘*A proper government must be all of a piece. If 


we think of God as displeased with this or the other event, and therefore . 
altering things, we get a system which it might perhaps be too strong to 


call atheism, but, to say the least, there is little of God in it.” 
2 Vide p. 28, 


THE DEISTIC THEORY. 119 


in accordance with the optimistic spirit of the system. It 
pronounced prayer inadmissible both in the physical and 
in the spiritual sphere; in the former, because it amounted 
to asking God to work needless miracles in our behalf; in 
the latter, because it was virtually asking God to do our 
work. Our duty is to acquiesce in the established order as 
the best possible, and to say, Thy will be done. 

2. The deistic view of human nature might be charac- 
terised as Pelagian. Of man’s moral shortcoming deists 
generally took a genial and tolerant view. They did not, 
indeed, like pantheists and materialists, get rid of sin 
altogether by denying human freedom. On the contrary, 
they asserted with emphasis the freedom of the will as one 
of man’s highest attributes, and claimed for him power to 
give practical proof of his freedom by a life of virtue and 
wisdom. Freedom was one of three great watchwords in 
the deistic creed—* God, Freedom, Immortality.” “ Thou 
canst because thou oughtest,” said Kant, herein acting as 
the spokesman of his time. But average deists did not 
take the moral imperative by any means so earnestly as 
did the great critical philosopher. They weakened the 
“shall” to make the “can” easier. In other words, they 
represented man as placed in circumstances which rendered 
it unreasonable to expect from him high moral attainment, 
and made it possible to regard him as essentially good, 
while admitting his faults. In this way they made sin a 
light thing, while not treating it absolutely as a nonentity. 
Misconduct arose from the “passions wild and_ strong,” 
on which Robert Burns threw the blame of his delin- 
quencies; from the senses, which, as Rousseau pled, make 
men, especially in youth, the victims of delusions; from 
the limitation of the spirit, which, according to Bahrdt,’ 
makes error in the earthly stage of man’s career a thing 
of course. It all comes of this body of death, this gross 
fleshly prison of the soul. But we are exhorted not to 


1 For an account of the opinions of this member of the Aufklérung 
fraternity, vide Noack’s Freidenker, 3ter Theil, pp. 103-136. 


120 APOLOGETICS. 


lament too bitterly that our spirit in the present life is 
subject to sense, and chained to a body which enslaves it. 
“Tf the spirit had been unconnected with a body, it would 
have had no merit in loving and pursuing a moral order 
which it had no temptation to violate. Human virtue in 
that case would have fallen short of the sublime, and sunk 
to the level of angelic goodness.”* Where to be virtuous 
is heroic, failure must be venial. Therefore those who are 
conscious of moral frailty need not greatly vex themselves. 
Nor need they fear the frown of an indulgent Deity. 
Pardon is a matter of course; no atonement is necessary ; 
no scheme of redemption called for. The true redeemer is 
death; not Christ’s death, but our own. When death 
comes, to quote once more the eloquent author of Emile, 
“Tam delivered from the trammels of the body, and am 
myself without contradiction.” 

3. These words help us to pass easily to the third 
characteristic of the deistic system—its pagan view of the 
future life. By the epithet “pagan” I mean to convey 
the idea that the hope of deism regarding the life beyond, 
like that of Greek philosophy, contemplates only a dis- 
embodied form of existence. The watchword of deism is 
the immortality of the soul; whereas that of Christianity 
is the resurrection of the body. On this point there is 
general agreement among the freethinkers of the eighteenth 
century. The re-embodiment of the soul in the life beyond 
is not merely not affirmed, but expressly denied and argued 
against. “Immortality,” writes the German illuminist 
Bahrdt, “what does that mean? The word man cannot 
here be taken in the full sense, since the greatest part of 
that which we name man enters into the circular course of 
nature, becomes earth and then plants, and distributes itself 
through a thousand forms of being. It can therefore be 
the ‘I’ only that is meant when it is maintained that man 
is immortal. I, the possessor of so many thousands of 
ideas, with the consciousness of my former and present 

2 Rousseau, Emile, Liv. iv. 


THE DEISTIC THEORY. 121 


condition, will continue, when my visible part, my body, 
has been for ever annihilated.”* The deistic habit of 
thought was to regard the body as a hindrance to the life 
of the soul, from which one should be thankful to be for 
ever rid. The Kantian sentiment, “ What would this clod 
of a body do in the eternal world?” all deists cordially 
endorsed, 

On one point connected with the doctrine of a future 
life the representatives of deistic tendencies betray per- 
plexity and exhibit contrarieties of opinion. With one 
consent they predict a blessed life after death for the 
good. But what of those who are not good, who have 
loved vice rather than virtue, folly rather than wisdom ? 
Are their souls, too, immortal, and how does it fare with 
these? Some were tempted to get rid of the perplexing 
problem by denying the future life altogether, choosing to 
forego the hope of an eternal reward to escape the un- 
welcome alternative of eternal punishment. This course, 
however, could hardly find general approval in a school of 
thinkers with whom the necessity of a future state to 
redress the inequalities of the present was a favourite 
theme. It was rather to be expected that they would 
follow the example of Reimarus, and boldly proclaim their 
belief in a future involving both alternatives—an infinite 
Fear, as well as an infinite Hope? Yet they could not but 
be in a strait betwixt two, for so robust a creed was dis- 
tasteful and repellant to deistical soft-heartedness; and 
many, accordingly, were at a loss what to believe. Chubb 
thought it questionable whether the retributions of the 
future ‘state, if there were such, would apply to any but a 
small number of conspicuous offenders and _ benefactors, 
consigning the rest of mankind to annihilation, as not 
worthy either of eternal weal or eternal woe’ Rousseau’s 
statement is the most typical and pathetic, giving vivid 


3 Noack, Die Friedenker, 3ter Theil, p. 123, 
* For the views of Reimarus, vide Noack, 3ter Theil, pp. 90-92 
® Leland’s Deists, i. 198, 199. 


122 APOLOGETICS. 


eloquent expression to the conflict between two classes of 
feelings — respect for divine justice and abhorrence of 
wickedness on the one side; faith in divine benevolence 
and pity for the suffering, however bad, on the other 
The antinomy is one with which all thoughtful humane 
men are familiar; and its effect is the same now as then, 
to abate dogmatism and produce suspense of judgment. 
Reviewing now this brief sketch of the deistic mode of 
contemplating the universe, it must be admitted that the 
picture presented is a very genial one. There is so much 
light and so little darkness in the deist’s world; so much 
Joy and so little misery—at least so little misery that has 
not a bright side to relieve the gloom; so much goodness 
and so little absolute wickedness. The deist moves about 
on this earth well pleased with God, with the creation, with 
his fellow-men, and above all with himself; his heart filled 
with tender sentiments, intoxicated with a sense of the 
beautiful in nature, passionately in love with virtue, cherish- 
ing high hopes of human progress in wisdom and goodness, 
until all the curses under which the race groans shall have 


disappeared, and the dark shadows of superstition been 


chased away, and the age of reason and common-sense been 
ushered in with millennial glory. You would not be sur- 
prised to hear him singing: “O Lord, how manifold are 
Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the 
earth is full of Thy riches.”? And again: “The glory of 
the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in 
His works. I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live... . 
My meditation of Him shall be sweet: I will be glad in 
the Lord.”* The next stanza: “Let the sinners be con- 
sumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more,” 
he would of course omit as unworthy of an enlightened age. 
He might say to himself, What a pity the pages of that 
otherwise excellent Hebrew book should be disfigured by 
so inhuman a sentiment, and that there should be so much 


1 Vide Emile, Liv. iv. 2 Ps. civ. 24. 
® Ps. civ. 31, 33, 34, 4 Ps, civ. 35. 


ee ee TE eT Te ee! 


: 
F 


THE DEISTIC THEORY. Tuo 


in it about sin and judgment, and wrath and sacrifice! And 
we in turn may say, What a pity there is so much in the 
world to justify these darker elements in the biblical mode 
of viewing God, man, and the course of providence, and to 
make the deist’s theory appear the romantic dream of one 
who refuses to see whatever is disagreeable to his feelings. 

Deistic optimism is superficial and extravagant. It may 
be distinguished from Christian optimism by saying that, 
whereas the Christian hopes that evil will eventually be 
overcome by good, the deist virtually denies the existence 
of evil, and proclaims the present prevalence of good. The 
deistical use of the argument from design in the service 
of this shallow and one-sided optimism is very open to 
criticism. Two questions might be raised in regard to it: 
whether the argument be at all competent, and, granting its 
competency, whether it supplies as unequivocal evidence of 
the goodness of God as deists imagined. 

The former of these two questions does not properly 
belong to the criticism of deism; seeing that the employ- 
ment of the teleological argument in proof of the being and 
attributes of God was not confined to deists, but was 
common to them and their Christian opponents. It may 
be said indeed with truth that this argument belongs not to 
a party but to mankind. Since the days of Socrates, and 
long before, the aspect of design everywhere exhibited in 
the works of nature has attracted the attention of thought- 
ful men, and been regarded as evidence that this world is 
the product of a Great Wise Mind. Even now, when the 
recent advance of science has rendered the argument in its 
old form antiquated, men thoroughly imbued with the 
modern scientific spirit are constrained to acknowledge its 
irresistible force, and Christian apologists claim for it, as 
readjusted to new intellectual surroundings, undiminished 
cogency. Another opportunity will occur for referring to 
this venerable line of proof; meantime it may suffice to say 
with reference to the deists, that as men who maintained 
the sufficiency of the light of nature they naturally made 


— 


124 APOLOGETICS. 


the most of all sources of knowledge concerning God 
accessible to reason, and especially of those traces of 
adaptive skill with which, by common consent, the world 
was filled. The only question that may fairly be asked is 
whether they read aright the lesson which the frame of 
nature teaches. 

Now it certainly is not the part of a Christian theist 
to meet the deistic inference of an omnipresent, all-per- 
vading divine benevolence with a chilling, unsympathetic 
negative. It becomes a believer in the Bible, and in 
Christ, to affirm with emphasis that “the earth is full of 
the goodness of the Lord,” and the average Christian is 
probably not by any means so optimistic as the genius of 
his faith requires him to be. But the interest of that faith 
demands that the doctrine of divine benevolence should be 
balanced by another doctrine, which is not indeed contrary, 
but complimentary to it, that, viz., which asserts the reality 
of a moral order in the world. Facts as well as the faith 
demand recognition of this truth. There is much in the 
world that may indeed be capable of reconciliation with 
divine benevolence, viewed as a disposition to make 
sentient creatures, and especially human beings, happy, 
but is far from being direct evidence of it. There is all that 
which has supplied food for superstitious fears and given rise 
to the worship of nature’s destructive powers, and which, to 
a Christian way of contemplating nature, affords evidence 
that the world is a theatre of judgment as well as of mercy, 
and a school of virtue in which the supreme aim is not to 
make man happy as an animal, but to make him partaker 
of holiness, and train him for heroic behaviour in suffering 
and in doing. This sterner side of nature the deists were 
unwilling to see. Human superstition they traced to the 
scheming of priests, not to the elements of nature working 
On man’s fears; on evil, the existence of which could not 
be denied, they put the best face: it was evil that looked 
at closely was really good, or it was evil resulting directly 
from man’s own fault, or it was temporary evil that would 


THE DEISTIC THEORY. 125 


be put right, and abundantly compensated for in a future 
state. Rousseau gave classic expression to the -deistic 
point of view in the following words :-— 


“ Moral evil is incontestably our work. The physical evil 
would be nothing without our vices which render us sensible 
to them. Is it not for the purpose of self-preservation that 
nature makes us feel our wants? ‘The pain of the body, is 
it not a sign that the machine is out of order, and a hint 
to take care of it? Death—do not the wicked poison their 
own life and ours? Who would wish to live always among 
them? Death is the remedy for the evils you inflict on 
yourselves. Nature has wished that you should not suffer 
always. ‘To how few evils man is subject living in primitive 
simplicity; he lives almost without disease, as without 
passions, and neither foresees nor feels death; when he 
feels it his miseries render it desirable, and it ceases to be 
an evil for him.”? 


The representation is not wholly false, but its one-sided 
tendency is manifest. The bias is that for which Butler 
supplied the needful corrective in his chapters on the 
Moral Government of God, and which he gently reproved 
in these terms: “ Perhaps divine goodness, with which, if 
I mistake not, we make very free in our speculations, may 
not be a bare single disposition to produce happiness, but 
a disposition to make the good, the faithful, the honest 
man happy.”? The tone of the Analogy of Religion is not 
itself, any more than that of deism, altogether true to 
the spirit of Christianity. It errs on the side of gloom, as 
deism erred on the side of gaiety. The general impression 
the book leaves on the mind of a reader is sombre and 
depressing. But the position taken up is unassailable, and 
might with truth be more strongly expressed than in the 
modest terms just quoted. God’s end in constructing the 
world was not, so far as we can see, to make men happy, 
irrespective of character, but to make character and lot 
correspond, or to use lot as a discipline for the develop- 

1 Emile, Liv. iv. 2 Analogy, chap. ii, 


126 APOLOGETICS. 


ment of character. This view, it will be observed, is in 
entire accordance with the Christian theory of the universe, 
in so far as it teaches that the world has a moral end, and 
that the creation is an instrument for the advancement of 
that end—the end being the establishment of the kingdom 
of God. , 

One reason why the modern reader is apt to find Butler’s 
Analogy dreary is that he reads it apart from its historical 
environment. If we came to its perusal fresh from a course 
of reading in deistic literature, we should thankfully imbibe 
its teaching as a wholesome tonic after dipping into the 
honey-pots of optimism. We could even stand a stronger 
dose in the shape of a draught of the bitter medicine of 
pessimism. For such as desire it this medicine is supplied 
in full strength by certain modern physicians. 

John Stuart Mill, in his essay on Nature, takes a very 
dark and gloomy view of the world. Discussing the 
question what is meant by following nature, he remarks 
that if by that be meant doing what we see physical nature 
doing, then we ought not to follow nature, because she 
does so many evil things. “In sober truth,’ he solemnly 
avers, “nearly all the things which men are hanged or 
imprisoned for doing to one another are nature’s everyday 
performances.”* After endeavouring to make good this 
grave charge by an enumeration of dismal particulars, he 
draws this conclusion with reference to the Author of 
nature: that He can be supposed to be good only on the 
assumption that His power is limited, so that He cannot 
help many of the evils which occur, and that nature affords 
no evidence whatever in favour of His being just. The 
net results of natural theology he thus sums up: “ A Being 
of great but limited power, how or by what limited we 
cannot even conjecture; of great and perhaps unlimited 
intelligence, but perhaps also more narrowly limited than 
His power; who desires and pays some regard to the 
happiness of His creatures, but who seems to have other 

1 Three Essays on Religion, pp. 28-80, 


a, eS 


THE DEISTIC THEORY. 137 


motives of action which He cares more for, and who can 
hardly be supposed to have created the universe for that 
purpose alone”! What would the men of the Auf- 
klirung have thought of such doctrine? How they would 
have held up their hands in virtuous horror at the profane 
Philistine who presumed to speak in this fashion of the 
omnipotent, omniscient, and utterly beneficent Creator |! 
But Schopenhauer goes still further, so that even Strauss is 
shocked, and in his tender feeling for the wniversum deems 
his brother philosopher guilty of something like blasphemy. 
Schopenhauer’s doctrine in brief is that the world is as bad 
as a world can be and yet be able to exist. Optimism he 
regards as an utter platitude and triviality, and a heartless 
mockery of human misery. A pessimistic view of the 
world is in accordance with fact, and has been recognised as 
such by thoughtful earnest men of all times and countries. 
The present state of the world is hopelessly bad, and there 
is no prospect of improvement in the future. Physical and 
moral evil will go on unabated for ever, and the only 
redemption or escape possible is the resignation of despair. 
Against this doctrine, which sees neither reason nor 
morality in the universe or its imaginary Author, Strauss 
contends that both a rational and a moral order are dis- 
cernible in the world3 And without doubt he is right 
The pessimism of such writers as Schopenhauer or Hart- 
mann is wilful and passionate, and ignores the patent facts 
that there is a Power in the world, conscious or uncon- 
scious, making for righteousness, and an all-pervading order, 
law, and reason, and manifold traces of a spirit of goodness, 
Nineteenth century pessimism is as far astray as was 
eighteenth century optimism. Both alike follow fancy and 
indulge their humour, and believe what is to their liking, 
rather than what, whether pleasant or otherwise, can on 
good grounds be shown to be true. Schopenhauer is a 


1 Three Essays on Religion, p. 194. 
3 Vide Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Buch IY. p. 59 
3 Der alte und der neue Glaube, p. 147. 


128 APOLOGETICS. 


cynic who views all things with jaundiced eye. The deist 
was a self-complacent wiseacre who constituted himself a 
special pleader for God against priests and bigots. The 
one reminds us of Job sitting on a dunghill cursing his 
day, and making desperate speeches against Providence; 
the other resembles one of Job’s friends dealing in weari- 
some platitudes, refusing to see any mystery in God’s ways, 
and comforting his afflicted friend by telling him he must 
be very wicked, seeing he is so miserable, for “who ever 
perished, being innocent.” 

If the deist’s view of the world and of providence was 
very superficial, not less so was his view of man. Naturally 
good, but often weak, liable to be enslaved by his passions, 
which have their seat in the body, from which, therefore, 
he will be released by death, error only what was to be 
looked for in the circumstances, therefore pardonable, and 
certain to be pardoned by an indulgent Deity—such was 
man in nature and destiny, as conceived by the apostles of 
common-sense philosophy. It was a theory not in accord- 
ance with fact, contradicted by the conscience of humanity, 
and anything but complimentary to the dignity of human 
nature. No man who knows the world, or whose moral 
sentiments have any vigour, can accept deistical anthro- 
pology. Kant, in many respects at one with deists in 
religious opinion, was not in accord with them at this point. 
With the characteristic dislike of a strong man for senti- 
mental twaddle, he virtually pronounced the Aufklarung 
philosophers, in their view of human nature and character, 
a crew of quack-doctors, who told their patient pleasant 
lies and administered to te: drugs unsuited to the gravity 
of his disease. Such is the import of the opening sentences 
of his treatise on Religion within the Bounds of Pure 
Reason : 


“That the world lies in the wicked one is a complaint 
which is as old as history—as old as the yet older art of 
poetry—nay, as old as the oldest of all inventions, priestly 
religion, All make the world begin from the good, from the 


THE DEISTIC THEORY. 129 


golden age, from life in Paradise, or happier still, from fellow- 
ship with heavenly beings. But this felicity they represent 
as passing away quickly as a dream, through a fall into moral 
evil, which ever since the fall has gone on increasing with 
constantly accelerating pace.” 


Of the contrary view prevalent among the philosophers 
of his own time that the world was steadily advancing 
onwards, he remarks: 

“Tt is certainly not drawn from experience, if it be of the 
morally good and bad, not of civilisation they speak, for the 
history of all times is decidedly against them. It is probably 
simply a good-hearted assumption of the moralists from 
Seneca to Rousseau, who wished to carry on unweariedly the 
culture of the seed of goodness possibly lying in us, and for 
that end thought good to start with the postulate that a 
natural foundation for such progressive culture was to be 
-gund in men.” 

Kant himself believed in a radical evil, appealing in 
proof to the wanton barbarities of savages, and to the 
characteristic vices of civilisation, insincerity, ingratitude, 
secret Joy in the misfortunes of even the most intimate 
friends, not to speak of sins of the flesh, which are of no 
account in an otherwise cultivated man. Referring to the 
remark of Walpole that “every man has his price,” he 
observes : 

“Tf this be true, and every one can satisfy himself on the 
point, if there be no virtue for which a measure of tempta- 
tion cannot be found able to overcome it; if the question 
which side we shall take, the good or the bad, turns on this: 
who offers most and pays most promptly—then, indeed, 
were true of men what the apostle says: ‘There is no dif- 
ference, for all have sinned ; there is none that doeth good, 
no, not one.’” 


While not affirming that Walpole’s cynical judgment was 
correct, Kant in these words plainly indicates what he 
thinks of men of whom it holds good. This suggests the 
reflection that in forming an estimate of man’s moral 
condition much depends on our moral ideal. Lenient 

I 


130 APOLOGETICS. 


judgments of character and sanguine views of man’s ability 
to fulfil the requirements of duty, may simply be the result 
of low-pitched views of what righteousness is and man 
ought to be. What, for example, do I think of the cor- 
ruptibility charged by Walpole against mankind? Do I 
regard it with abhorrence, or simply as a thing to be 
laughed at, done by nearly everybody, and no great harm 
in it? In the latter case it may be easy for me to enter- 
tain a favourable opinion of men, even of politicians; the 
only question will be, What is my opinion worth? But in 
the former case I may find it hard to cherish a favourable 
view of average human character; for when it is remem- 
bered how easily men can be induced to tamper with truth, 
justice, and mercy for a very little gain, not only in the 
sphere of politics, but in commerce, and indeed in all 
departments of life, it has to be acknowledged that if all 
men have not their price, at least very many have. Medi- 
tating on this fact I, in case I do from the heart abhor the 
subordination of righteousness to interest, will be apt to 
regard human goodness as a deceitful appearance, and to 
be reminded of Christ’s picture of the Pharisees: whited 
sepulchres, fair without, within full of rottenness and dead 
men’s bones. And when I extend my views to other sins 
besides that of venality, my sense of human depravity will 
only be deepened till I am constrained to acquiesce in 
Christ’s verdict on human sinfulness as strictly true: “Out 
of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, 
fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” This ver- 
dict I will not merely admit to be true of others, but 
take home to myself. To flattering optimists I will reply: 
“In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. Nay, 
I cannot throw all blame on my flesh. There is evil in 
my mind, envy, vanity, pride, schadenfreude, meanness, 
selfishness, hateful indifference to, and lack of sympathy 
with, the wellbeing of my fellow-men. Wretched man! 
who shall deliver me, not merely from this body of death, 
but from these evil satanic spirits ?” 


EN Ee a NT ee ee a ee ee ene en eae 


a a 


Set sy <.. 


THE DEISTIC THEORY. 131 


On the deistic view of the future life it is not necessary 
to dilate. Here, as elsewhere, the characteristic shallow- 
ness of the system appears. In its conception of the life 
to come pagan rather than Christian, it was slipshod in its 
method of proof. The body dies but not the soul, because 
it is immaterial; the good get not what they deserve here, 
therefore God in justice is bound to give them a second 
life hereafter by way of compensation. If there be a God 
who wills the happiness of men, He must will their virtue, 
and He must further supply them with sufficient motives 
to virtue. But sufficient motives to virtue exist not, if my 
ego do not continue, and virtue have no enduring con- 
sequences. Therefore I must expect continued existence 
from God. How characteristic this over-confident fore- 
cast! These genial optimists are sure that God will give 
them everything they wish or fancy that they need. The 
world to come is necessary to their happiness, therefore 
they will certainly have it. No wonder such men were 
surprised to find next to no traces of the doctrine of im- 
mortality in the Old Testament. A professed revelation 
without a doctrine of immortality—impossible! exclaimed 
Reimarus, all true sons of the Aufklirung vehemently 
assenting. Yet, after listening for some time to the oracular 
utterances of the apostles of reason on “ the great enigma,” 
one begins to be conscious of a profound respect for the 
reticence of Hebrew prophets and poets, who, whatever 
their thoughts on hereafter might be, were content to be 
silent on a theme concerning which they had no sure 
message to communicate. The silence of the Old Testa- 
ment about immortality, so surprising to deists, is much 
more divine than their own copious effusive speech, 


132 APOLOGETICS. 


CHAPTER VI. 
MODERN SPECULATIVE THEISM. 


Lirerature.—F. W. Newman, The Soul and Phases of 
Faith ; Theodore Parker's works, especially A Discourse on 
Religion, vol. i., and Of Speculative Theism, vol. x1. 5 Miss F. 
P. Cobbe, Broken Lights and Darwinism vn Morals and other 
Essays; W.R. Greg, Creed of Christendom and Enigmas of 
Life; Pecaut, Le Christ et La Conscience and sur L’ Avenir 
du Theisme Chretienne ; Schwartz, Zur Geschichte der mewesten 
Theologie ; Pfleiderer, Die Religion ; Martineau, A Study of 
Religion ; Aubrey L. Moore, Science and the Faith. 


In most, if not in all, essential particulars, the system of 
thought which goes by the name of modern speculative 
theism represents the same religious tendency as that 
which in the eighteenth century was known as deism, free 
thought, Aufklarung. In the more recent system there is the 
same rejection of revelation, the same reduction of religion 
to a few elementary beliefs made accessible to all by the 
light of nature, the same optimistic view of the world, the 
same naturalistic conception of God’s relation to the world, 
the same sceptical attitude towards the miraculous in every 
shape and sphere. Yet the leading expositors of the 
system are very anxious not to be confounded with deists. 
Hence the choice of the title theists, which, so far as 
etymology is concerned, ought to mean the same thing as 
deists, the only difference between the words being that 
the former is derived from the Greek name for God, Oe0s, 
while the latter is derived from the Latin name, Deus. An 
English representative of the new school thus distinguishes 
between it and the old: 


The deism of the last century, with its cold and dry 
negations of Christianity, has passed away for ever, and given 
place toa theism which, in the writings of Newman and 
Theodore Parker, may vie for spirituality and warmth of 


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MODERN SPECULATIVE THEISM. 133 


religious feeling with any other faith in the world. God is 
no longer to us the Great First Cause discoverable through 
chains of inductive argument, and dwelling far away in 
unapproachable majesty, where only our awe and homage 
and not our prayers and love might follow Him. He is our 
Father in heaven once more, the God who reveals Himself 
hourly to our consciences and our hearts; who is nearer and 
dearer than earthly friend may ever be; in whom we desire 
consciously to live and move and have our being here, in 
the joy of whose love we trust to spend our immortality 
hereafter.” 1 


The American apostle of theism referred to in this 
extract defines his position, as distinct from that of deists, 
in these terms: 


“T use the word theism as distinguished from deism, 
which affirms a God without the ferocious character of the 
popular theology, but still starts from the sensational 
philosophy, abuts on materialism, derives its idea of God 
solely by induction from the phenomena of material nature 
or of human history, leaving out of sight the intuition of 
human nature; and so gets its idea of God solely from 
external observation, and not at all from consciousness, and 
thus accordingly represents God as finite and imperfect.” 2 


The difference between modern theism and deism is to 
a considerable extent one of tone rather than of principle. 
The more recent system is warmer in temperament; 
speaking generally that is to say, for the deists were not 
all frigid, some of them being almost as emotional in 
their religious character as Miss Cobbe herself, There is 
observable also in the literature of the later movement 
an appreciative manner of speaking concerning the Holy 
Scriptures and Christ which we miss in most deistical 
writings. While denying to the Bible all claim to be or 
to contain a divine revelation in any exclusive sense, and 
to be regarded as the literary product of an inspiration 


" Miss Cobbe, Broken Lights, p. 175. 


* “Of Speculative Theism regarded as a Theory of the Universe,'’ Works, 
xi. 105, 


134 APOLOGETICS, 


limited to its writers, modern theists are effusive in their 
eulogies on the sacred writings as the most excellent of 
all known productions of human genius within the sphere 
of religion. Of Christ also, while denying His divinity 
and even His absolute moral perfection, they are reverential 
admirers, as a man of unsurpassed, if not unsurpassable, 
wisdom and goodness. Therefore they claim to be Chris- 
tians, and call themselves Christian theists, and even hold 
that they have a better right to the name than those who 
confess the Catholic creed of Christendom, which they 
regard as a monstrous and melancholy perversion of Chris- 
tianity as taught and exemplified by Jesus Christ Himself. 

Of this modern movement of religious thought, as 
claiming to be something new and distinctive, and as 
entitled to respect for the earnestness and ability displayed 
by its leading advocates, it is meet that some account 
should here be given. A brief statement and criticism of 
its characteristic views may help the believer to a clearer 
understanding of: his own position in relation to con- 
temporary opinion. The task is not altogether easy; for 
the representatives of the system, while all professing to 
derive their inspiration from one source, the moral con- 
sciousness, are by no means at one in their sentiments. 
It is even doubtful who are to be taken as representatives, 
whether, for example, the author of The Creed of Christendom 
and Dr. Martineau may be classed with Francis Newman, 
Frances Power Cobbe, and Theodore Parker, who may 
without hesitation be regarded as typical exponents. 

The subject of chief interest is the conception of God 
in relation to the world. Theism of the type now under 
review may be broadly distinguished from deism by saying 
that the former conceives of God’s relation to the world 
as one of wmmanence, and the latter as one of transcendence. 
These philosophic terms, which have recently obtained 
currency in the sphere of speculative thought, do not con- 
vey a very definite meaning to minds unaccustomed to 
their use. For popular purposes the distinction may be 


MODERN SPECULATIVE THEISM. 135 


identified with that between within and without. An 
immanent God is a God who abides within the world, a 
transcendent God is a God who dwells above and beyond 
the world. The distinction may be made vivid to the 
imagination by representing the immanent Deity as 
imprisoned, in respect of His being and energy, within the 
world, and the transcendent Deity as in the same respects 
banished to the outside of the world; the imprisoned God 
being the God of modern theism, the banished God the 
God of deism. Delitzsch, having in view chiefly German 
representatives of the theistic creed, states the difference 
thus : 


“While speculative theism in a one-sided manner em- 
phasises the immanence of God, the old deism emphasised 
with equal one-sidedness His transcendence. The former 
makes God the active ground of the world-development 
according to natural law, which is dependent on Him, He 
in turn being dependent on it; the latter placed Him above 
the perpetuum mobile of the universe, and made Him a mere 
spectator of human history; both agreeing in the opinion 
that there is no need or room for a supernatural incursion 
of God into the natural course of development, and refusing 
to recognise in Christ a new creative beginning and all 
that goes along with that.” 


No intelligent Christian in our time can hesitate as to 
which of the two contrasted views of God’s relation to 
the world is to be preferred. The deistic conception of 
God as an artificer who long ago made a perfect machine, 
and then left it to work in obedience to its own self- 
acting forces, is entirely out of date. The mechanical 
conception of the universe has given place in modern 
thought to the organic, and that has brought along with 
it an altered view of God’s relation to the universe as 
somewhat analogous to the relation of soul to body. Thus 
far all are agreed, influenced by the spirit of an age 
dominated in all departments of human thought by the 

1 System der Christlichen Apologetik, p. 157. 


—~ 


136 APOLOGETICS. 


great idea of evolution. But on looking more narrowly into 
the matter, one soon discovers that the Christian theory of 
the universe and that of speculative theism part company. 

The distinctive view of speculative theism, when it 
aims at philosophic precision, is that God, while not to be 
confounded with the world, as in pantheism, is still so far 
one with the world that His activity is rigidly confined 
within the course of nature. All the energy displayed in 
the world is His, and therein consists His immanence; 
there is in Him no activity which does not reveal itself 
in the world of matter and of mind according to the laws 
of each, and this amounts to a denial of transcendence. — 
Theodore Parker, however, who, perhaps, of all English- 
speaking representatives of the school, has the greatest 
pretensions to a speculative habit of thought, does not admit 
that his doctrine is one of mere immanence. He thus 
defines his position as against pantheism : 


“Tf God be infinite, then He must be immanent, perfectly 
and totally present in nature and in spirit. Thus there is 
no point of space, no atom of matter, but God is there; no 
point of spirit, and no atom of soul, but God is there. And 
yet finite matter and finite spirit do not exhaust God. He 
transcends the world.of matter and of spirit,and in virtue of 
that transcendence continually makes the world of matter 
fairer, and the world of spirit wiser. So there is really a 
progress in the manifestation of God, not a progress in God 
the manifesting. In thought you may annihilate the world 
of matter and of man; but you do not thereby in thought 
annihilate the Infinite God, or subtract anything from the 
existence of God. In thought you may double the world of 
matter and of man; but in“so doing you do not in thought 
double the Being of the Infinite God; that remains the 
same as before. That is what I mean when I say that God 
is infinite, and transcends matter and spirit, and is different 
in kind from the finite universe.” } 


The doctrine that God is both immanent and transcend- 


1“ Of Speculative Theism regarded as a Theory of the Universe,” Works, 
xi. 108. 


MODERN SPECULATIVE THEISM. 137 


ent is the distinctively Christian one, and we might 
therefore expect to find Mr. Parker, after laying down such 
a position, prepared to assign a place in his system to a 
supernatural divine activity. Yet this was far from his 
thoughts. His doctrine on the miraculous is: “ No whim 
in God, therefore no miracle in nature. The law of nature 
represents the modes of God Himself, who is the only true 
cause and the only true power, and as He is infinite, un- 
changeably perfect, and perfectly unchangeable, His mode 
of action is therefore constant and universal, so that there 
can be no such thing as a violation of God’s constant mode 
of action.”1 Thus, so far as the fixity of nature’s course 
is concerned, it is as if there were no God distinct from 
nature, no God other than the natwra naturans of Spinoza. 
Supernatural incursion is inconceivable, impossible. 

The immanence of God in the human spirit is asserted 
by Mr. Parker not less unqualifiedly than in reference 
to the world of matter. All human thought and will, in 
his view, is in reality God’s thought and will. He identifies 
divine inspiration with the exercise of the human intellect 
on all subjects. “It is the light of all our being; the 
background of all human faculties; the sole means by 
which we gain a knowledge of what is not seen and felt, 
the logical condition of all sensual knowledge; our high- 
way to the world of spirit.”* It belongs to all men in 
varying measure, proportioned to the amount of their 
mental powers and the extent to which they have exercised 
these. It reveals itself in varying forms according to the 
diversity of gifts, making one man a philosopher, another a 
poet, a third a musician, and a fourth a prophet. It be- 
longs to no man in a supernatural form, or in absolute 
degree, not even toa Christ; for absolute inspiration would 
be a miracle. In effect this is to resolve the intellect of 
man into the intellect of God. 

The absorption of the human will into the divine is 


1 Works, xi. 114, 
$ ** A Discourse on Religion,” Works, 1, 141, 


138 APOLOGETICS. 


asserted by this author with equal emphasis, not indeed 
on purely speculative grounds so much as in the interests 
of a sweeping optimism. Holding that God not only wills, 
but is bound, to save all men, and even to provide a heaven 
for the sparrow, he sacrifices human freedom to escape all 
risk of miscarriage. “In that part of the world not 
endowed with animal life there is no margin of oscillation, 
and you may know just where the moon will be to-night, 
and where it will be a thousand years hence.” “In the 
world of animals there is a small margin of oscillation, but 
you are pretty sure to know what the animals will do.” 
“But man has a certain amount of freedom, a larger 
margin of oscillation wherein he vibrates from side to 
side.” But what then? “The perfect cause must know 
the consequences of His own creation, and knowing the 
cause and the effects thereof, as perfect providence, and 
working from a perfect motive, for a perfect purpose, with 
perfect material and by perfect means, He must so arrange 
all things that the material shall be capable of ultimate 
welfare.” + In short, men must be saved without excep- 
tion, and God’s goodness vindicated, come what will of 
human freedom. 

Theism of this type seems to approach indefinitely near 
to pantheism. We are therefore not surprised to find 
Parker hesitating to ascribe to God personality. “As the 
Absolute Cause God must contain in Himself, potentially, 
the ground of consciousness, of personality—yes, of uncon- 
sciousness and impersonality. But to apply these terms 
to Him seems a vain attempt to fathom the abyss of the 
Godhead, and report the soundings.” On this subject, 
however, other members of the school lean more to theistic 
than to pantheistic views. The warm temperament of 
modern theists, despite their philosophic tendencies, inclines 
them to affirm with more or less emphasis the personality 
of Deity. From the same cause they love to think of God 
as a Father. Parker in his exuberant, extravagant way 

1 Works, xi. 116-119. 2 Works, i. 104. 


MODERN SPECULATIVE THEISM. 139 


was wont in his prayers to address God not only as 
Father but as Mother. Miss Cobbe makes the very 
essence of the new theism, that which distinguishes it 
from every other creed in the world, consist in the assertion 
of God’s absolutely paternal goodness. “Negatively it 
will reject all doctrines of atheism or pantheism on the 
one hand, and of a plurality of divine persons on the 
other. Affirmatively it will assert not only the unity, 
and eternity, and wisdom, and justice of God, but above 
all that one great attribute which is our principal concern, 
His goodness.” } 

If God be a Father, then we His children may make 
known to Him our needs; but what room can there be for 
prayer in a system which restricts divine activity to the 
fixed course of nature? Are modern theists not conscious 
of a difficulty here? They are, and the manner in which 
some have attempted to meet the difficulty is instructive. 
On this topic the new theistic school, as represented 
by Miss Cobbe, differs from the old deistic school, as 
represented by Rousseau, when he said, “I bless God, 
put I pray not.” Miss Cobbe insists, with much emphasis, 
on the value of prayer as a safeguard for theists against 
ultimate lapse into pantheism. “Theism to be a religion 
at all, and not a philosophy leading off into pantheism, 
must be a religion of prayer.” “If we abandon prayer, 
the personality of God recedes away into the dimness of 
distance. We begin to think of a Creative Power, a 
World-Spirit, a Demiurge——the All of things.”? This is 
a very frank, though incidental acknowledgment of the 
pantheistic tendency of the system, and it is quite ‘natural 
and proper that one conscious of the danger and dreading 
it should have recourse to prayer as an antidote. But the 
habit of prayer is not likely to be persisted in merely 
as an aid to a theistic way of thinking concerning God. 
Perseverance in the pious exercise can spring only out 
of earnest belief in the possibility of obtaining thereby 

1 Broken Lights, p. 157. 2 Ibid. pp. 179, 180. 


140 APOLOGETICS. 


some practical benefit greatly desired. But is such 
belief reconcilable with the doctrine that the divine 
activity is rigidly restricted to, and indeed synonymous 
with, the fixed course of nature? The answer given by 
those who plead for the reasonableness and utility of 
petitionary prayer consists in a distinction taken between 
the physical and the spiritual worlds, to the effect of 
confining such prayer to the latter as its sole legitimate 
sphere. Prayer, it is maintained, is irrational when the 
benefit desired is physical,—health, wealth, good weather,— 
but competent and prevailing when our requests are 
directed to spiritual blessings, for such requests amount 
to asking God to fulfil His own laws of the spirit. “It 
is not irreligious to ask that God should perform His will 
on us, that will which we know is our sanctification, our 
purification from all taint of sin, our elevation to all 
heights of spiritual good and glory.” It may not be 
irreligious, but the question is, Is it not superfluous on a 
thoroughgoing doctrine of immanence, just as much so 
as it is on a thoroughgoing doctrine of transcendence ? 
On the latter doctrine divine activity is entirely excluded 
from the sphere of the human spirit, and God, as Rousseau 
taught, can only look on, while man, in the exercise of 
his. freedom, does or neglects his duty. On the former 
doctrine, on the other hand, the divine activity is identical 
with that of the human spirit. It is God that thinks and 
wills and struggles against evil in us, and He does all, 
not by free concurrence in answer to our prayers, but by 
the same necessity by which He acts through the law of 
gravitation. Thus the two extremes meet in a common 
exclusion of prayer, for the justification of which, even in 
the spiritual sphere, it is necessary to combine in our 
conception of God’s relation to our spirit the two con- 
trasted ideas of immanence and transcendence, believing 
that He is in us “both to will and to do,” but not so 
that He “under the mask of our personality does our 
1 Broken Lights, p. 177. 


MODERN SPECULATIVE THEISM. 141 


thinking, and prays against our temptations, and weeps 
our tears,” but rather through “a sympathy free to answer, 
spirit to spirit, neither merging in the other, but both 
at one in the same inmost preferences and affections.” 
Nor does any reason appear why prayer thus justifiable 
should be confined to the spiritual sphere. It may, indeed, 
be contended that God is wholly immanent in the physical 
sphere, wherein therefore His action can only take the 
form of invariable natural law, and that He is transcendent 
only with reference to the spiritual sphere, wherein He 
may act supernaturally as “free cause in an unpledged 
sphere,’ communicating His grace in answer to prayer.” 
The truth scems to be that He is both immanent and 
transcendent in all spheres. 

Modern theism, in spite of superficial differences, betrays 
its affinity with the older deism, very specially in its 
optimistic views of divine providence and human destiny. 
Parker is here the most characteristic representative of 
the school. According to his sunny creed, all things work 
together surely for the good of men, nay, of all living 
creatures. “The sparrow that falls to-day does not fall to 
ruin, but to ultimate welfare. Though we know not the 
mode of operation, there must be another world for the 
sparrow, as for man.”® This is not only a matter of fact, 
but a matter of right. Every creature has a right to be 
made for a perfect purpose. The right is inherent in 
creaturehood ; it depends not on the position any particular 
creature occupies in the scale of being, and therefore it is 
equal for all. It cannot be voided by any accident of their 
history. It is easy to see what view this involves of 
pain and error, physical and moral evil. These are to 
be regarded as divinely ordered economies,—temporary 

1 Martineau, 4 Study of Religion, ii. 190. ; 

2 This seems to be the view maintained by Martineau. Vide A Study of 
Religion, ii. 190-194, where, however, the subject of discussion is not 
the limit of legitimate prayer, but the personality of God, its grounds and 


implications, in vindication of theism as against pantheism. 
3 Works, xi, 115. 


142 APOLOGETICS, 


ills working toward a higher good for man and beast, now 
or hereafter. At this point modern theism is at its greatest 
distance from pantheism; for while the latter denies 
abiding significance in the universe even to man, the 
former claims an eternal value for the meanest creature 
that lives or exists. 

By way of criticism on this recent system of religious 
thought, two points only need be insisted on. In the 
first place, it is obviously a theism in a state of very 
unstable equilibrium, tending to topple over into pantheism, 
and conscious of its need for the culture of a devotional 
spirit to avert the catastrophe. It is not a consistent, 
carefully - thought-out theory of the universe, but an 
eclectic system, with elements borrowed from pantheism 
and Christianity; on the emotional side Christian, on 
the philosophic side pantheistic, and destined eventually 
to go wholly over either to the one side or to the other. 

Secondly, on the religious side this system is scarcely 
more satisfactory than on the speculative. The far-off, 
transcendent God of deism is admittedly an unsatisfactory 
object of faith and worship. But is the immanent Deity of 
modern theism a great improvement? Can a God eternally 
immured within the prison walls of the universe meet the 
wants of our religious nature? What great difference 
is there between this immanent God and the natura 
naturans of Spinoza? Is it replied that this God is 
personal, the self-conscious benignant author of the world? 
Good, but whence comes this knowledge? From the 
moral consciousness. The heart demands such a God; 
there is really no other evidence for His existence. But 
is the heart satisfied to stop there? If the heart is to be 
listened to, let us hear all it has to say. Does it not 
demand a God not only personal but free, a God who can 
hear prayer in all spheres, exercise a constant providence 
over men through the ordinary course of nature or other- 
wise, work miracles, become man, demonstrate His love 
by that extreme act of condescension ? 


MODERN SPECULATIVE THEISM. 143 


This question reminds us that in another aspect of funda- 
mental moment the system now under review is weak on 
its religious side. It totally fails to satisfy the craving 
of our minds for religious certainty. The exclusive organ 
of revelation for the modern theist is the moral conscious- 
ness. Discarding a historical revelation as out of date, 
useless, incredible, impossible, he looks to the light within 
—conscience, the spiritual nature of man. And surely if 
there were no other light available than that of our own soul 
it would be natural and right that we should make the 
most of it. Nor can one have any wish to disparage that 
light, far less to deny its existence, for God has not left 
Himself without a witness in the human spirit, and there 
is truth in the saying of Tertullian, conscientia naturaliter 
Christiana. But it may without hesitation be affirmed 
that the light within is dim, to be used thankfully and 
hopefully in the absence of a better, yet not such as to 
justify a contemptuous attitude towards that which is 
offered us as a more sure word of prophecy. In proof 
it igs enough to point to the utterances of those who in 
recent years have professed to derive all their religious 
inspiration from the human soul. [Illustrative instances 
may legitimately be taken from all who make this pro- 
fession. It will be found on inquiry to be almost the 
only thing on which they are agreed, On hardly one of 
the great questions of religion does the oracle give a 
certain sound. Take the personality of God. Miss Cobbe 
affirms confidently, Mr. W. R. Greg affirms timidly, 
Theodore Parker almost denies, that God is a Personal 
Being; all on the authority of the moral consciousness. 
Or take the goodness of God. The moral consciousness of 
Mr. Parker enables him to trace throughout human history 
the constant action of an infinitely benignant Providence. 
Mr. Greg’s consciousness tells him a less flattering tale, 
bearing witness indeed to divine goodness, but finding it 
impossible to save that goodness from suspicion, except 
by a limitation of divine power, which makes it impossible 


144 APOLOGETICS. 


to prevent many evils overtaking man. Or, take the 
great question of a future life, and what it will bring. 
Mr. Parker believes in a life to come; in a heaven for 
man, beast, and bird; in an absolutely universal salvation 
from sin and misery. This comfortable creed Mr. Greg 
is not able to accept. The future for him is “the great 
enigma.” The intellect may imagine it, but could never 
have discovered it, and can never prove it. The “soul” alone 
can reveal it. The revelation is a purely personal affair. 
If my soul does not speak to me, it is in vain that another 
man’s soul has spoken to him; that will not help me. 
The soul does not speak to Mr. Greg in very audible 
or distinct tones. It tells him that there are abundant 
possibilities for a dreadful hell in the spirit of man con- 
ceived as continuing after death, but that probably the 
morally crude specimens of humanity will escape this 
doom by ceasing to exist. “Probably what God bestows 
at birth is a germ, not a finished entity, not an immortal 
soul, but a nature capable of being worked up into a soul 
worthy of immortality, an organisation rich in the strangest 
and grandest potentialities; not a possession, but an 
opportunity ; not an inheritance, but the chance of winning 
one. Perhaps it may be only such natures as develop 
adequately, and in the right direction in this life, that 
will be heirs of heaven, and that all others may, as it 
were, never pass beyond the embryonic or earthly stage 
of existence.”* Take one other instance, the utility of 
prayer, a vital question in practical religion. Here, too, 
the prophets of the soul are at variance. Miss Cobbe 
declares prayer to be both legitimate and useful within 
the spiritual sphere, and neither legitimate nor useful 
within the physical. Mr. Greg pronounces prayer theo- 
retically indefensible in all spheres, therefore impossible 
for those who possess insight into the truth of things, but 
permissible and harmless for the weak and ignorant. 

These examples of variation do not encourage us to 

1 Enigmas of Life, p. 221. 2 Creed of Christendom, ii. 196-209. 


MODERN SPECULATIVE THEISM, 145 


cherish a high opinion of the moral consciousness as an 
independent and reliable guide in religion. They seem 
to prove that the inner light is not a sun but a moon, not 
a lamp but a mirror, reflecting rays which fall upon it 
from other sources. Plato, who gave all diligence to 
make the best possible use of this light, was conscious of 
its dimness, and sighed for a surer word concerning human 
destiny than his own conjectures. The surer word came, 
and for a while the world was thankful. Now a different 
temper prevails; men place overweening trust in the light 
within, and despise the light without, though, to a large 
extent, it is the real though unacknowledged source 
of the light within. The altered mood finds eloquent 
expression in the sentences which follow—the enthusiastic 
utterance of a prophetess of the new revelation: 


“In the long pilgrimage of our race we have reached a 
point where the way to the celestial city is no longer clear, 
and where no angel or interpreter stands by to direct us. 
To the right les the old road which our fathers trod, and 
where we can yet recognise their venerable footsteps. But 
that path is a quicksand now, hardly able to bear the 
weight of a traveller who would plant his feet firmly as he 
goes. To the left there is another path, but it turns visibly 
before our eyes away from that city of God which has been 
hitherto our goal, and passes down fathomless abysses of 
lonely darkness where our hearts quail to follow. Straight 
before us lies a field hardly tracked as yet by the pilgrim 
feet which have passed over it, a vast field full of flowers 
and open to the sun. May the king of that country guide 
us, so that walking thereon we may find a new, straighter 
road to the celestial city on high, beyond the dark river, 
and to the Beulah land of peaceful faith here upon earth.” 4 


The same tone of buoyant confidence in the sole and 
sufficient guidance of reason or spiritual intuition is 
audible in the more recent utterances of a greater prophet. 
Dr. Martineau recognises the claim neither of Church 
uor Bible to be an authoritative guide in religion. Not 

1 Miss Cobbe, Darwinism in Morals and other Essays, p. 146, 
K 


146 APOLOGETICS. 


even to Jesus will he concede the right to be regarded as the 
Light of the world. For negative criticism has enveloped 
His history in a thick mist of uncertainty, and a series 
of faith-woven veils have hid His face beyond recognition. 
We cannot now truly know or clearly see the Son of man. 
Nor does it greatly matter. We have within ourselves, 
each man apart, the light that can be implicitly trusted. 
In spiritual intuition, God immediately reveals Himself 
to every faithful soul. That is the true, first-hand, 
authoritative revelation.! 


CHAPTER VIL 
AGNOSTICISM. 


LITERATURE.—Herbert Spencer, First Principles; Fiske, 
Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy; Flint, Theism ; Martineau, 
Study of Religion (vol. i.,“ Restatement of Teleological Argu- 
ment”); Lotze, Mikrokosmus ; Janet, Final Causes; Principal 
Caird, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion ; Professor 
Edward Caird, The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte ; 
Green, Prolegomena of Hthics; Aubrey L. Moore, Science 
and the Faith; Kennedy, Natwral Theology and Modern 
Thought ; Kaftan, Die Wahrheit der Christlichen Religion ; 
W. Hermann, Der Verkehr des Christen nuit Gott ; Chapman, 
Preorganic Evolution and the Christian Idea of God; Royce, 
The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. 


In the foregoing chapters the aim has been, by the method 
of comparison, to make the Christian mode of conceiving 
God, man, and the world, and their relations, appear 
theoretically satisfactory, and on practical ethical grounds, 
preferable. This done, we might consider our speculative 
task achieved. But it seems meet, ere passing from this 
division of the subject, to take notice of a prevailing 
attitude of mind which does not express itself by pro- 
pounding a distinctive theory, but rather by declining 

1 Vide The Seat of Authority in Religion, Books III. and Y. 


AGNOSTICISM. 147 


to have one, and by pronouncing all actual or possible 
theories incompetent. This attitude in our time is called 
agnosticism. It is the negation of real or possible know- 
ledge concerning God and His relations to man and the 
world. God is, for this modern mood, an unknown 
quantity, of which we are not in a position to affirm 
anything. That He is may be admitted, but what He 
is no man it is held can know. 

This doctrine of nescience is prominently associated 
with the name of Mr. Herbert Spencer, the author of 
A System of Synthetic Philosophy. In his statement of 
First Principles, Mr. Spencer devotes a chapter to the 
discussion of ultimate religious ideas, which ends with 
these ominous words: “The Power which the universe 
manifests to us is utterly inscrutable.” The bearing of 
this position on the important problem of the origin of 
the world is clearly indicated in the following sentences :-— 
“Respecting the origin of the universe, three verbally 
intelligible suppositions may be made. We may assert 
that it is self-existent, or that it is self-created, or that 
it is created by an external agency. Which of these 
suppositions is most credible it is not needful here to 
inquire. The deeper question, into which this finally 
merges, is, whether any one of them is even conceivable 
in the true sense of the word.”2 That is to say, in the 
opinion of the writer, atheism, pantheism, and theism 
are all alike incompetent attempts to solve a problem which 
is really insoluble. The obvious practical lesson is that 
we should abstain from all such vain efforts, and rest in 
the conviction “that it is alike our highest wisdom and 
our highest duty to regard that through which all things 
exist as The Unknowable.” ® 

From the terms in which the founder of modern 
agnosticism formulates his doctrine, it appears that this 
much is known about The Unknowable: that it is a 
“Power which the universe manifests,’ and “through 

1 First Principles, p. 46. 2 Ibid. p. 30. 8 Jbid, p. 118, 


148 APOLOGETICS. 


which all things exist.” One might hope that if so 
much can be known, a little more knowledge might be 
attainable ; that, eg., something might be learned concerning 
the ultimate Source of being from the world which it has 
brought into existence. This, however, is peremptorily 
denied. While holding that the phenomenal universe is 
the manifestation of a Power that cannot be identified with 
the totality of the phenomena, the agnostic philosopher 
maintains that we can learn nothing as to the nature of 
this Power from the qualities of the phenomena, The 
ultimate Cause of the world cannot be known through 
its effects. An American disciple of Mr. Spencer seeks 
to prove the incompetency of this method of knowing God 
by a reductio ad absurdwm. “Since the universe contains 
material as well as psychical phenomena, its first Cause 
must partake of all the differential qualities of those 
phenomena. If it reasons and wills, like the higher 
animals, it must also, like minerals, plants, and the 
lowest animals, be unintelligent and unendowed with 
the power of volition, which requires in the first Cause 
a more than Hegelian capacity for uniting contradictory 
attributes.” } 

That the agnostic position is fatal, or at least most 
hostile, to all earnest Christian faith, does not need to be 
pointed out. If from nature, history, or the human soul 
no hints of truth concerning God, except, perhaps, that He 
is, can be derived, a higher revelation, if not impossible, 
is at least apt to appear incredible. Such faith in a 
self-revealing God, as one imbued with the agnostic 
temper still cherishes, can be but an evening twilight, 
after sunset, destined soon to fade into darkness. If the 
teaching of Christ concerning God be true, it ought to be 
in harmony with what nature in all its spheres suggests, 
not to say proves. The Christian doctrine of God, to be 
valid, must be a hypothesis which all we know tends to 
verify. If this be found to be the fact, if the Christian 

1 Fiske, Outlines ef Cosmic Philosophy, ii. 388, 889. 


AGNOSTICISM. 149 


God be not without a witness in all parts of the world 
accessible to observation, then the believer will feel 
himself confirmed in his faith by the consciousness of 
being in harmony with the universe, of which he forms 
apart. On the opposite alternative, faith is in the air, 
unsupported, isolated, struggling to maintain itself in spite 
of the chilling negations of reason and science. 

The sceptical attitude of agnostics may seem to be 
justified by the mutual contradictions of the advocates of 
theism. For it is the fact that, while those who profess 
nescience assert the valuelessness of all attempts to know 
what God is, there are few believers in the possibility of 
knowing God who do not deny the validity of some theistic 
arguments, and that there is little agreement among those 
who hold in common a theistic creed as to what proofs are 
valid, and what sources of knowledge available. Hardly 
any argument has been advanced which has not been 
assailed not merely by unbelievers but by _ believers. 
Apologists, accepting unanimously theistic conclusions, have 
differed widely as to the premises from which these ought 
to be drawn. Speaking generally, it may be said that 
there is a close connection between the line of proof 
adopted by the theistic advocate and the school of philo- 
sophy to which he belongs. Disciples of Locke, Kant, and 
Hegel all disallow arguments alien to their respective 
philosophies, and advance others more akin to these, which 
to minds outside the school have not infrequently appeared 
less conclusive than the arguments supplanted. 

Among the theistic proofs which have commanded wide 
acceptance, the foremost place is due to the three entitled 
respectively the cosmological, the teleological, and the 
ontological, which may be called the standard arguments 
for the existence of a great First Cause, almighty, wise, 
good, and perfect. The first argues from the mere existence 
of a world to an absolutely necessary Being from whom it 
took its origin. The world as a whole it regards as an 
effect whose cause is God. The argument implies that the 


150 APOLOGETICS. 


world as we know it is contingent, that is, does not 
necessarily exist, and that it is an event, or had a com- 
mencement. The principle on which it proceeds is that 
for all contingent being the ultimate source must be a 
cause necessarily and eternally existing. Its force may be 
evaded either by denying that the world had a beginning ;? 
or by denying that any contingent system of things needs 
any cause other than an antecedent system also contingent, 
explicable in turn by a third, and so on ad infinitum in 
an eternal succession of causes and effects; or yet again, 
more boldly, by maintaining that the category of causality 
is inapplicable to God as the Supersensible and the 
Infinite.” 

The teleological argument is based on the manifold 
instances of adaptation discernible in the world, as of the 
parts of an organism to its function, or of an organ to its 
environment. These adaptations wear the aspect of design, 
and suggest the thought that a world full of them must be 
the work of an infinitely wise Mind. “He that planted 
the ear, shall He not hear? THe that formed the eye, 
shall He not see?” ‘To the religious spirit the reasoning 
quaintly conveyed in these questions of the Psalmist will 
never cease to appeal. Science and philosophy may 
criticise, but science itself only supplies new materials for 
an argument, which, suggested. by a single instance of 
adaptation, acquires through the indefinite multiplication 
of examples a cumulative force which many feel to be 
irresistible. Living in a cosmos everywhere pervaded by 


1 Flint says that the question whether the universe had a commencement 
is the question in the theistic argument from causality.— Theism, p. 101. 

2 Kant maintained that the principle of causality cannot take us beyond 
the limits of the sensible world. Principal Caird contends that the category 
can be applied only to the finite. His argument is to this effect. The 
relation of cause and effect implies the succession or the coexistence of its 
members. In the latter case things exist externally to each other, mutually 
ating on each other. In the former the cause passes into the effect and 
ceases to be ; heat produces and passes into motion. Both aspects of the 
relation imply a limitation in space and time that cannot have place with 
reference to God as infinite and eternal. Vide his Spinoza, pp. 167, 168, 


AGNOSTICISM. 151 


order, the man of unsophisticated mind finds it impossible 
to acquiesce in the dictum of Strauss: “This world was 
not planned by a highest reason, though it has the highest 
reason for its goal.’! He rather endorses with emphasis 
the verdict of Mr. J. S. Mill, no prejudiced witness, that 
“Tt must be allowed that in the present state of our know- 
ledge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of 
probability in favour of creation by intelligence.” ? 

Yet since the days of Kant this ancient, popular, and 
still impressive argument has been regarded with more or 
less disfavour by many philosophers and theologians. Kant 
himself, while treating it with respect, strove to minimise 
its value, partly in order to read a lesson of moderation to 
the men of the Aufklarung, who did their best to make it 
ridiculous. He held that it yields at most a World-Architect, 
not a creator, Author of the form not of the matter of the 
universe, and only a very wise Architect, not an absolutely 
wise, and doubted if in strict logic it can give us so much. 
He robbed it of all support in the internal adaptations of an 
organism such as the eye, by his conception of an organism 
as a structure in which all the parts mutually condition 
and produce each other, are mutually to each other at 
once cause and effect, and all alike are possible only 
through their relation to the whole and owe their existence 
to their relation. In this bearing of all the parts on 
the whole he recognised a teleology of nature, yet not 
such as implies a cause outside of them who has an idea 
of their design. He admitted that it comes very natural 
to. us to think of such an outside designing cause, but held 
nevertheless that the conception comes from our own spirit, 
and has no objective value? In this view he was 
followed by Hegel, who, in his lectures on the proofs 
of the existence of God, remarks: “The inner construction 
of the bodily organism, the functions of the nerve and 


1 Der alte und der neue Glaube, p. 1438, 
2 Three Essays on Religion, p. 174. 
3 Kritik der Urtheilskraft 


152 APOLOGETICS. 


blood system, of the lungs, liver, stomach, and their 
mutual harmony, are certainly very surprising. Does not 
this harmony demand Another besides the organic subject 
as its cause? This question we may leave on one side, 
as if one grasps the notion of an organism, this develop- 
ment of teleological adaptation is a necessary consequence 
of the vitality of the subject.” 

The Darwinian theory has largely restricted the material 
available for the teleological argument, by inverting the 
mode of conceiving the relation between an organ and its 
environment. Whereas of old the fitness between the two 
was regarded as the result of intentional adaptation of 
organ to environment, according to the new scientific point 
of view the fitness is the result of the slow, unconscious 
action of environment on organ, producing in the course 
of ages development from a crude condition to a very high 
state of perfection. While thus accounting for all cases of 
useful adaptation, the theory claims to have this advantage 
over the old teleological view of the world, that it can 
explain such phenomena as are presented in rudimentary 
and useless organs, which it is difficult to imagine being 
made by design. 

Some scientific writers have sought to bring discredit 
on the teleological view of the world by pointing out 
defects in organs which, on that view, would have to be 
regarded as instances of blundering on the part of the 
Creator. The eye, formerly a favourite theme for the 
teleologist, has been carefully studied in this controversial 
interest. Generally the tendency of physical inquiry has 
been to enlarge the sphere of the unintentional in nature. 
Thus a Walidouo at writer, himself a theist, and very com- 
petent to speak on the topic, remarks: “It is not in 
accordance with the facts of experience that all parts of 
nature point to ideal significance and definite aims. 
Along with a thousand appearances which give this im- 
pression go a thousand others which look like aimless by- 
products of an accidental self-formed combination of atoms, 


AGNOSTICISM. 153 


which by no means ought to arise under a preconceived 
plan, and which have arisen and maintained themselves in 
being because they did not contradict the mechanical 
conditions of continued existence.” * 

The ontological argument infers the existence of God 
from the idea of Him necessarily entertained by the 
human mind. The idea we cannot help forming of God 
is that of a Being than which a higher cannot be conceived, 
absolutely perfect in all respects. Into this conception 
existence necessarily enters as an element, for a supposed 
highest, most perfect Being not conceived as existing 
would not be the highest conceivable. Therefore a most 
perfect Being exists. Such is the gist of the argument as 
first formulated by Anselm. It wears a subtle scholastic 
air, which puzzles the mind and makes it difficult to decide 
whether to regard it as a very profound and conclusive 
piece of reasoning, or as a sample of ratiocinative trifling. 
On the whole, one inclines to the view of Kant, who, in his 
criticism of this argument, while conceding that the idea 
of existence entered into the idea of the most perfect 
Being, argued that the idea no more involves the reality of 
existence than the notion of a hundred dollars in my mind 
proves that I have them in my purse. 

Through lengthened and continuous criticism of these 
famous arguments, it has come to pass that in their old 
forms they are no longer available, and that they must 
therefore either be abandoned or transformed. Some 
pursue the one course, some the other. It was not to be 
expected that so valuable a line of proof as that supplied 
in the second of the three would be lightly given up by 
theists, and accordingly efforts have been made recently 
to restate the “design argument” so as to fit it to the 
present condition of scientific knowledge and thought. 
Those who have laboured in this sphere have striven to 
show that accepting the modern doctrine of evolution and 


1 Lotze’s Mikrokosmus, Bd. II. p. 29. 
§ Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 409. 


154 APOLOGETICS. 


the account which it gives of the order and method of 
creation, there is still ample scope for an argument which 
aims at proving that the world has been made, and its 
upward development guided, by an almighty, wise, and 
beneficent Creator.’ Others have sought a foundation for 
their theistic convictions in entirely different directions. 
Abandoning the region of teleology to the tender mercies 
of sceptical scientists, they have justified belief in God 
either by an appeal to the facts of the moral world, or by 
an analysis of self-consciousness ; in the one case following 
Kant, in the other Hegel. Kant, failing to find any sure 
trace of God in the region within which the theoretic 
reason bears sway, turned to the domain of practical 
reason, and found there as an actual existence the Being 
who had hitherto been only a regulative idea. Virtue and 
happiness ought to correspond, but happiness depends 
largely on external conditions over which we have no 
control; therefore we must postulate a moral Governor 
who is able to bring the order of nature into harmony 
with the moral world—such was the gist of the argument 
which certified for him the reality of Deity. To some it 
has appeared not less weak than the arguments it super- 
seded, as, eg., to Strauss, who criticises it in these terms: 
“The agreement of virtue and happiness from which the 
argument starts is In one respect, in the inner man, 
already present; that the two should be harmonised in 
outward conditions is our natural wish and rightful 
endeavour; but the ever incomplete realisation of the 
wish is be be found not in the postulate of a Deus ex 
maching, but in a correct view of the world and of 


i Among those who deserve honourable mention here are Flint (Zheism) 
and Martineau (A Study of Religion, vol. i.). They have at least tried well, 
whatever may be thought of their success. With their contributions may 
be associated that of Kennedy, who, in the Donellan Lectures for 1888-89, 
strives to show that whatever may be thought of the validity of the design 
argument in other spheres, it still holds in the region of the beautiful, which 
it is contended cannot be accounted for on Darwinian principles, Vide 
Lecture iv. 


AGNOSTICISM. 155 


fortune.”! Nevertheless for many the “moral argument” 
of the great critical philosopher in one form or another 
remains the sheet-anchor of faith. A recent apologetic 
writer of the Neo-Kantian school thus indicates his pre- 
ference for it as compared with the “design argument ”: 


“The rationalising mode of viewing the world starts from 
the teleological order. Finding in the world interrelated 
ends and means, while in the things themselves is neither 
consciousness nor will, it infers an intelligent wise Originator 
and Guide of all things. It is the very soul of this point of 
view that it understands and knows how to interpret the 
means in single instances, whilst it becomes uncertain as 
goon as it attempts to complete itself through the recognition 
of a supreme all-dominating idea of anaim. The Christian's 
faith in Providence inverts the point of view. Its starting- 
point is not the world as exhibiting the aspect of design, but 
the certainty of divine love, which has chosen him from 
eternity, and therefore orders all so that it must promote his 
best interest. Not the teleological connection of things and 
events is the object of his contemplation, but the divine 
purpose to confer on him blessedness.” ? 


For writers imbued with the spirit of the Hegelian philo- 
sophy, the chief source of the knowledge of God is the 
self-consciousness of man, or the nature of human thought. 
The line of proof may be said to be a modification of the 


1 Der alte und der neue Glaube, p. 119. 

2 Kaftan, Die Wahrheit der Christlichen Religion, p. 60. I+ ia character- 
istic of Kaftan and the school of theology to which he bewugs, that of 
Ritschl, to restrict the function of theology to showing how for the mem- 
bers of the Christian community the religious view of the wortd, as existing 
for the sake of the kingdom of God and the realisation of the good, is possible. 
Attempts either at proving from the general non-ethical features of the 
world the existence of God, or at deducing from the idea of God these 
features, such writers as Kaftan and Hermann (Die Metaphysik tn der 
Theologie, 1876 ; Der Verkehr der Christen mit seinem Gott, 1890) regard 
as extrancous, injurious, and even incompetent. They would be agnostics 
but for Christ, whose presence as a fact in this world, through His sinlessness 
and His faith in a Power bent on realising the good, brings light where other- 
wise deepest darkness would brood. With the stress laid on Christ one 
can cordially sympathise, but surely if Christ’s idea of God be true there 
should be something in the world to verify it! 


~ 


156 APOLOGETICS. 


ontological argument. It is an inference from thought to 
being; not merely from the thought of God as the most 
perfect being to His existence, but from the very nature of 
thought in general to the Great Eternal Thinker. God is 
very near us, on this view. We do not need to roam the 
world over in quest of proofs that the world was made by 
a Being of infinite skill; we have only to consider what is 
involved in being conscious of ourselves, or in a single act 
of thinking. For the consciousness of self involves the 
consciousness of a not-self. Self and not-self are thus, in 
every act of consciousness, at once opposed and embraced 
in a higher unity. Consciousness posits a self, a not-self, 
and a higher Being in whom the two opposites meet and 
are reconciled. “Thus all our conscious life rests on and 
implies a consciousness that is universal. We cannot 
think save on the presupposition of a thought or conscious- 
ness which is the unity of thought and being, or on which 
all individual thought and existence rest.”1 Nor is it 
alone in our highest thoughts that the Universal Thinker 
is revealed. He is present in the humblest act of percep- 
tion. What we have to recognise in all our perceptions of 
the external world is an animal organism, which has its 
history in time, gradually becoming “the vehicle of an 
eternally complete consciousness.”2 To this eternally com- 
plete consciousness the system of relations which constitute 
the universe is ever present in its totality as an object of 
contemplation; through our human consciousness it attains 
to knowledge of the system piecemeal by a gradual process. 
It would serve no purpose to comment on these positions, in 
the way either of explanation or of criticism. To those within 
the school they seem clear and certain ; to those without they 
are apt to appear abstruse, unintelligible, and baseless.® 

1 Principal Caird, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 
131, 132. 

2 Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 72. 

8 For a criticism of the views of the British Neo-Kantian school of philo- 


sophy, vide Veitch’s Knowing and Being, and Seth’s Hegelianism and 
Personality. 


AGNOSTICISM, TOT 


When one considers the facts connected with the history 
of theistic evidence: how few arguments command the 
general assent even of theists, how much the line of 
proof adopted depends on the advocate’s philosophic view- 
point, and how little respect the rival schools of philosophy 
pay to all methods of establishing the common faith but 
their own, he is tempted to think that that faith is without 
sure foundation, and that the agnostic is right when he 
asserts that knowledge of God is unattainable. But there 
is another way of looking at the matter which deserves 
serious attention. While differing as to what proofs are 
valid and valuable, all theists are agreed as to the thing to 
be proved: that God is, and to a certain extent what God 
is. This harmony in belief ought to weigh more in our 
judgment than the variation in evidence. It suggests the 
thought that the belief in God is antecedent to evidence, 
and that in our theistic reasonings we formulate proof of a 
foregone conclusion innate and inevitable. How otherwise 
can it be explained that men who have demolished what 
have passed for the strongest arguments for the theistic 
creed are not content to be done with it, but hold on to 
the conviction that God is, on grounds which to all others 
but themselves appear weak and whimsical? Thus a 
recent writer, after searching in vain the whole universe of 
matter and of mind for traces of Deity, finds rest at last 
for his weary spirit in this train of thought: There is such 
a thing as error, but error is inconceivable unless there be 
such a thing as truth, and truth is inconceivable unless 
there be a seat of truth, an infinite all-including Thought 
or Mind, therefore such a Mind exists, That Mind is 
God, the “infinite Seer,” whose nature it is to think, 
not to act. “No power it is to be resisted, no plan- 
maker to be foiled by fallen angels, nothing finite, 
nothing striving, seeking, losing, altering, growing weary ; 
the All-Enfolder it is, and we know its name. Not 
Heart, nor Love, though these also are in it and of it; 
Thought it is, and all things are for Thought, and in 


158 : APOLOGETICS, 


it we live and move.”! How weak the proof here, but 
how strong the conviction! So it is, more or less, with 
us all, In our formal argumentation we feebly and 
blunderingly try to assign reasons for a belief that is 
rooted in our being. In perusing works by others devoted 
to the advocacy of theism, we are conscious of disappoint- 
ment, and possibly even of doubt suggested rather than of 
faith established, only to recover serene and strong convic- 
tion when the book is forgotten It would seem as if the 
way of wisdom were to abstain from all attempts at proving 
the divine existence, and, assuming as a datum that God is, 
to restrict our inquiries to what He is. Without pronounc- 
ing dogmatically as to the incompetency of any other method 
of procedure, I shall here adopt this policy, and confine 
myself in the remainder of this chapter to a few hints in 
answer to the question, How far is the Christian idea of 
God “a hypothesis which all we know tends to verify ” ? 
Christ taught that God is a Father and that man is His 
son, and that it is a leading purpose of God to establish 
between Himself and men a kingdom of filial relations and 
loving fellowship. This doctrine implies that there is a 
close affinity of nature between God and man, that, indeed, 
the most direct and certain way to the knowledge of God 
is through human nature. Now the view thus suggested 
of the man-like nature of God is in accordance with the 
teaching of the most recent science. Man, according to 
science not less than Scripture, stands at the head of crea- 
tion as we know it. He is the crown and consummation 
of the evolutionary process, by the frank admission of one 
of the most brilliant expounders of the modern theory. 
“So far from degrading humanity,” writes Mr. Fiske, “or 
putting it on a level with the animal world in general, the 
doctrine of evolution shows us distinctly for the first time 


1 Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 435. 

? Lipsius says that the various ‘‘ proofs” for the being of God are no 
proofs, but only the various momenta of the elevation of the human spirit 
to God, and that their root is not @ priori thought, but religious experience, 
—Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, p. 231, 


AGNOSTICISM. . 159 


how the creation and the perfecting of man is the goal 
towards which Nature’s work has been tending from the 
first. We can now see clearly that our new knowledge 
enlarges tenfold the significance of human life, and makes 
it seem more than ever the chief object of divine care, the 
consummate fruition of that creative energy which is mani- 
fested throughout the knowable universe.” * It is a reason- 
able inference that from the creature who occupies this 
distinguished place something may be learned concerning 
the nature of the Creator. The author just quoted, indeed, 
protests against this inference, and maintains, as we have 
seen, that God’s nature cannot be known from one part of 
the creation more than from another. But this view is 
compatible only with such a conception of the universe as 
that of Spinoza—a mere monotonous wilderness of being 
in which all things are equally significant or insignificant, 
not to be distinguished as lower and higher. This is not 
the conception of the evolution theory, which teaches us 
to regard the universe as the result of a process which, 
beginning with a fiery cloud, passed through many suc- 
cessive stages in an ever-ascending scale, from star-vapour 
to stars, from dead planets to life, from plants to animals, 
from apes to men. It is in keeping with this grand con- 
ception to see in the final stage of the process a key to the 
meaning of the whole, and in man a revelation of God as 
a Being possessing mind and guided by purpose.” 

If the Creator be not only like man in nature, but had 
man in view from the first as the end of creation, we may 
expect to find traces of a purposeful guidance of the evolu- 

1 Man’s Destiny, p. 116. The same doctrine is very strongly asserted by 
another American writer. Le Conte says: ‘‘ Without spirit-immortality 
this beautiful cosmos, which has been developing into increasing beauty for 
so many millions of years, when its evolution has run its course and all is 
over, would be precisely as if it had never been—an idle dream, an idiot tale 
signifying nothing.” —Lvolution and its Relation to Religious Thought, p. 
329. Le Conte is an enthusiastic advocate of the evolution theory of crea- 
tion, but also a not less enthusiastic defender of Christian theism. 


2 Vide The Miraculous Element in the Gospels, chap. i., where the line of 
thought here indicated is more fully developed, 


160 APOLOGETICS. 


tionary process so as to insure that it should reach its end. 
There is reason to believe that such traces are not wanting, 
and recent theistic writers have done good service in 
pointing them out, and in so doing have furnished the 
restatement of the teleological argument rendered necessary 
by the dislodgment of it from its old ground through the 
influence of the Darwinian theory as to the origin of species. 
The details cannot be gone into here. Suffice it to say 
that the end has been reached: man is here, and it has 
been reached through a steadily upward process, not as a 
matter of course, but through manifold risks of miscarriage, 
which have not been escaped by happy accident, but by crea- 
tive control. There is no known law of necessary advance- 
ment, no reason in the nature of the case why variation 
should proceed in an upward direction. “ Apart from the 
internal constitution of an organism having been so planned, 
and its external circumstances so arranged as to favour 
the one rather than the other, its variations could not have 
been more towards self-perfection than self-destruction.” 2 
The Christian doctrine of God, as in nature like man, is 
in accordance with the latest teaching of science regarding 
the nature of force. According to that teaching, all physical 
forces are convertible into each other, and are all but 
diverse manifestations of one ultimate force. Thus the 
question arises, What is the nature of that ultimate force ? 
The agnostic replies, It is inscrutable. But reason suggests, 
What if the Power that is at work in the universe be like 
that form of power with which we are most familiar, the — 
power exercised by the being who stands at the head of 
creation, and reveals the mind of the Creator—Will-power ? 
Once more, if God, as Christ teaches, be like man, He 
possesses not only Intellect, Purpose, and Will, but moral 
character. Many have seen in the moral nature of man, 
the conscience, a powerful witness to the existence of God. 


1 Flint, Theism, p. 202. For a spirited attempt to base a theistic argu- 
ment on the evolutionary process antecedent to the introduction of life, 
vide Chapman’s Preorganic Hvolution and the Biblical Idea of God, 1891. 


AGNOSTICISM. 161 


Without calling in question the validity of the argument, 
my present purpose is to point to the human sense of 
right and wrong as showing not that God is, but what He 
is. Man’s place in the universe, as assigned to him by 
science, makes it legitimate and reasonable to do so, And 
history confirms the inference to morality in God suggested 
by an inspection of man’s moral nature. Men of all 
schools, pessimists excepted, are agreed that a moral order 
is revealed in the story of the human race. Carlyle and 
Arnold interpret its lesson in much the same way as the 
Hebrew prophets. Whether the Power that makes for 
righteousness be conscious and personal or otherwise may 
be a subject of dispute or doubt. The main point is that 
the Power exists—imperfectly manifested, it may be, a 
tendency rather than a completely realised fact, yet 
indubitably there. As revealed in human affairs, it 
possesses some noticeable characteristics. It is slow in 
action, especially on the punitive side, and it seems, not 
now and then, as if by accident, but with all the regularity 
of a law, to treat the best of men as if they were the worst, 
making the good suffer as the bad ought. Prophetically 
imterpreted, and expressed in religious language, these facts 
mean: that God is patient, slow to anger, prone to pardon, 
giving evil men ample space to repent; and that in the 
moral world the good are called to the heroic function of 
redeemers, propagators of righteousness, and as such have 
to suffer, the just by and for the unjust. In other words, the 
moral order of the world is not only a reign of retributive 
justice, but a reign of grace, under which love is the supreme 
law, with full scope for the display of its nature as a spirit of 
self-sacrifice,and thestream of tendency is steadily towards the 
grand consummation, the bringing in of the kingdom of God. 

In the foregoing observations, man, his nature and posi- 
tion in the universe, is made the basis of the theistic 
argument. And this is as it ought to be. Science aims 
at explaining man from the world, but religion explains 
the world, in its first Cause and last End, from man. 

L 


162 APOLOGETICS. 


The two attitudes are not incompatible, but their tend- 
encies are as diverse as their points of view. The one 
tends to minimise, the other to magnify, the peculiarity of 
man. The patrons of the two methods are apt to be 
unjust to each other, either undervaluing the aim of the 
other, and remaining comparatively unimpressed by his 
lines of proof. In the case of the scientific man this 
defect may appear specially excusable. For the demon- 
strations offered by the representatives of the religious 
view of the world are not of that strict order to which the 
scientist is accustomed. The results arrived at are not 
logically inevitable conclusions from . absolutely certain 
premises. They are value-judgments resting on moral 
erounds, and involving an exercise of freedom, or, to speak 
more correctly, a bias due to the esteem in which we hold 
man as a moral personality, and to the habit of regarding 
his moral nature and destiny as the key to the riddle of 
the universe. A man can be an agnostic if he pleases. 
Faith in God is an affair of personal conviction. No 
offence is meant by this statement. It is not intended to 
insinuate that unbelief is the effect of an unsatisfactory 
moral condition. It may be frankly acknowledged that 
many worthy men are agnostics, as many worthless men 
are theists. Nevertheless it remains true that it is with 
the heart man believeth. God is the postulate of a soul 
that finds the world without God utterly dark and un- 
intelligible. And those who believe in God most firmly 
best know what it is to-doubt. Faith is the result of a 
successful struggle against all that tends to produce reli- 
gious atrophy, including too exclusive devotion to scientific 
habits of thought, which may turn the mind into “a 
machine for grinding out general laws out of large collec- 
tions of facts,” and prove fatal not only to religious faith, 
but even to all taste for poetry, music, and pictures,} 


1 For an instructive example of this, vide The Life and Letters of Charles 
Darwin, i. 318. For remarks on the candid confession of Mr. Darwin, 
vide Aubrey L. Moore’s Sc and the Faith, pp. 216-218. 


AGNOSTICISM. 163 


The agnostic, however, need not be altogether without 
God. There remains for him the absolute unknown 
Reality, deanthropomorphised and devoid of all qualities, 
capable of awakening an awe like that produced by a 
sandy desert. For more thoroughgoing agnostics who 
profess nescience as regards even the existence of the 
ultimate Reality, and for whom the universe is reduced 
to mere phenomenalism, there is available as an object of 
worship or service Comte’s Supreme Being—Humanity, the 
“subjective synthesis” which meets the demands of the 
heart, in absence of the objective synthesis, wherein the 
universe finds its centre of unity, denied by the intellect.’ 


1 For an acute criticism of the religion of humanity, vide Martineau’s 
Types of Ethical Theory, i. 472. Vide also Professor Edward Caird’s 
Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte, where the religion of humanity 
is criticised from the view-point of the Hegelian philosophy, and it is argued 
‘‘that the true synthesis of philosophy must be objective as well as subjective, 
and that there can be no religion of humanity which is not also a religion of 
God” (Preface, p. xvii). 


BOOK IL. 


THE HISTORICAL PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY. 


CHAPTER L 
THE SOURCES. 


LITERATURE.—Ewald, Die Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 
Band I.; Graf,.Die Geschichtlichen Biicher des Alten Testa- 
ments; Reuss, La Bible (new translation, with Introductions 
and Commentaries); Kuenen, Origin and Composition of the 
Hexateuch (translated from the Dutch) ; Wellhausen, Zhe 
History of Israel (including Prolegomena to the History of 
Israel and article “Israel” from the Hneyc. Brit.) ; Bissell 
(of Hartford Theol. Sem.), The Pentateuch: its Origin and 
Structure (Conservative); Driver, Introduction to the Lntera- 
ture of the Old Testament. 


On a comprehensive view, the whole previous history of 
the world and of its religion might be said to be a divinely 
ordered preparation for the coming of Christ. But in the 
present work our attention must be concentrated mainly on 
the people from whom as concerning the flesh Christ came. 
This limitation, while bringing the subject within man- 
ageable dimensions, involves no serious sacrifice of truth, 
For Christ was emphatically a Jew in mind as well as in © 
body. So far as His religious character is capable of 
being explained by historic antecedents, it is sutticiently 
accounted for by the religion of Israel, without reference to 


any supposed influence emanating from other quarters, as, 
164 


THE SOURCES. 165 


e.g., the philosophy of Greece.!. What we have therefore to 
do is to make ourselves acquainted with the religious 
history of that remarkable race to which belonged “the 
adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the 
giving of the law, and the service of God, and the 
promises.” 

The sources of this knowledge are the Hebrew Scriptures. 
The characteristics of these writings as the literature of 
Revelation will come up for consideration at a later stage; 
meantime we regard them simply as a channel of informa- 
tion concerning the people who physically and spiritually 
were the ancestors of Jesus. In using them for this pur- 
pose, the apologists of the present day are in a very dif- 
ferent position from that of those who lived before modern 
Biblical Criticism took its rise. Then to exhibit the his- 
torical preparation for Christianity was a comparatively 
simple task. Accepting the Jewish tradition respecting 
dates and authorship of books, the apologist opened the 
Old Testament and read it as the plain uncultured man 
reads it still. Thence he drew out with unsuspecting 
confidence the history of Redemption in its various stages ; 
beginning with the quaint picturesque simplicity of the 
patriarchal age, the era of the Promise; passing on to the 
Lawgiving under Moses, who was conceived to be the 
human author of all the laws recorded in the Pentateuch ; 
advancing through the chequered narrative of judges and 
kings—mostly transgressors of the God-given law, and by 
their conduct helping to justify Paul’s view of the law as 
given only for the knowledge of sin—to the splendid period 
of the Prophets, who grasped the full significance of the 
promise and purpose of God concerning Israel, and taught 
the people to fear Jehovah, to do His will, and to trust in 
His mercy, and warned them of coming judgment upon 
persistent disobedience. Thereon followed in due course 


1 It is well known that Dr. Ferdinand Baur represented Christ as indebted 
indirectly for His conception of man as a moral subject to the Socratio 
philosophy, Vide his Geschichte der Christlichen Kirche, i. 10-16. 


166 APOLOGETICS, 


the story of the exile, of the restoration, of the religious 
revival under Ezra, and of the long night of legalism 
which ensued when the sun of prophecy set, till at length 
the dawn came with the advent of Jesus, in whom promise, 
law, and prophecy all found their fulfilment. 

It is an altogether imposing picture of Divine Provi- 
dence marching on with a redemptive purpose from the 
call of Abraham in the grey dawn of time to the coming 
of Him through whom the whole earth was to be blessed 
throughout an unending era of grace. But criticism has 
rudely assailed the foundations of this historical construc- 
tion. It tells us that the narratives concerning the 
patriarchs cannot be implicitly accepted as history, that 
Genesis, the book of origins, was not written by Moses, 
but is of much later date, and of composite nature, a 
story woven out of separate documents, with diverse 
literary characteristics, as, ¢g., distinct names for God, one 
preferring the. title Jehovah, another Elohim The order 
in which these two documents were produced is as yet 
an unsolved problem, some critics regarding the Elohistic 
document as prior and the original base of the present 
composite narrative, others holding it to be long pos- 
terior, and even as late as the period of the Babylonian 
exile. The Jehovist document most critics regard as 
belonging to the great prophetic period, and as imbued 
with the prophetic spirit. To it we owe the charming 


1 This of course is a very inadequate account of critical views as to the 
composition of Genesis. When.the matter belonging to the Elohistic docu- 
ment has been removed, it is found on close examination that the remainder 
is not homogeneous in structure. It resolves into two parts, in one of 
wkich the name Elohim is used (without the other literary characteristics of 
the Elohistic document), and in the other Jehovah. These are regarded as 
remnants of two independent narratives by authors belonging respectively to 
the northern and southern kingdoms. The two together, as used in Genesis 
and elsewhere, are distinguished as JE from the Elohist document, whose 
symbol is P (Priests’ Code, with special reference to the ceremonial sections 
in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers). The fact of there being two Elohists 
is puzzling to novices. Vide Driver’s Introduction to the Literature of ihe 
Old Testament, pp. 9-12. 


THE SOURCES. 167 


stories of the patriarchs, which we are to take not 
as exact history, but as the embodiment of prophetic 
ideas. 

Modern criticism further tells us that the collections of 
laws contained in the books of the Pentateuch which 
follow Genesis are for the most part post-Mosaic. The 
only exception to this statement with regard to which 
there is anything like unanimity is the Decalogue, and 
even to it a Mosaic origin is denied by some leading 
critical authorities. At least three distinct strata of legis- 
lation, of different dates, but all subsequent to the time of 
Moses, as written compilations, are discovered in these four 
books: the short code in Ex. xx. 22—xxili, 19, designated 
in Ex. xxiv. 7 the Book of the Covenant; the more 
extended body of laws contained in Deuteronomy, espe- 
cially in chapters xii—xxvi., distinguished as the Deutero- 
nomic Code; and the large collection of laws relating to 
religious ritual, uncleanness, and kindred topics, scattered 
throughout the middle books of the Pentateuch— Exodus, 
Leviticus, Numbers — appropriately called the Prvestly 
Code. Even within this code distinct strata are recog- 
nised, the group of laws in Lev. xviii—xxvi. being 
specially recognised as outstanding, and called with refer- 
ence to its subject-matter the Law of Holiness. It is 
supposed to have been originally a separate work, and 
to have been incorporated in the Ey. code by the 
compiler. 

As to the order in which these three codes came into 
existence critics are by no means agreed. There is, indeed, 
a general agreement as to the Book of the Covenant being 
the earliest, but there is serious difference of opinion as to 
the relative position of the other two. During the earlier 
period of the critical movement, the opinion prevailed that 
the priestly code was prior to the Deuteronomic, finding 
its place in the Elohistic document, which was supposed 
to be the Grundschrift, or basis of the present composite 
work called the Pentateuch, or including Joshua the 


168 APOLOGETICS, 


Hexateuch But more recently the strong drift of criti- 
cism has been towards the view that the priestly code was 
the latest product of legal literary industry, and that it 
did not take shape till after the Babylonish exile. The 
Deuteronomie code is believed to be definitely fixed down 
to a certain date by the statement in 2 Kings xxii. 10 
concerning a book which Hilkiah the high priest found in 
the house of the Lord, and gave to Shaphan the scribe, and 
which Shaphan read to King Josiah. This book, it is held, 
was none other than the Deuteronomic code, not merely 
found but composed then, somewhere about the middle of 
the seventh century before Christ. 

It is not necessary for our present purpose to under- 
take the elaborate task of setting forth in detail the grounds 
on which these critical views rest. Suffice it to say that 
two questions figure prominently in the argument: those, 
viz., relating to the restriction of worship to one central 
sanctuary, and to the distinction between the priests and 
the Levites. By reference to the former point, the order 
of the three codes is determined to be, first, the Book of 
the Covenant; second, the Deuteronomic code; third, the 
priestly. The argument is: in the Book of the Covenant 
a plurality of sanctuaries is recognised as legitimate ;? in 
the Deuteronomic code one central sanctuary, the sole 
legitimate place of worship, is insisted on with an emphasis 
and iteration which imply recent innovation on old custom; 
in the priestly code one sanctuary is treated as a matter of 
course, gainsaid by no one, and held to be as ancient as the 
time of Moses. By reference to the distinction between 
priests and Levites, it is held by Wellhausen and others 
to be easy to determine the relative age of the Deutero- 
nomic and priestly codes. In the former no such distinc- 
tion exists, the phrase constantly used being “the priests the 


1 The literary diversities noticeable in the book of Genesis, referred to on 
p. 166, run through the Pentateuch and Joshua, so that P and JE are 
sources not only for Genesis, but for the whole Hexateuch, 

3 Vide Ex. xx, 24, 


THE SOURCES. 169 


Levites”; in the latter the distinction is carefully made, a 
fact naturally pointing to later legislative changes. That the 
change was post-exilic is argued from a significant passage 
in Ezekiel, in which priests and Levites are still spoken of 
as one, but an intimation is given of future differentiation 
based on the misconduct of a certain class of Levitical 
priests, those, viz., who had served at heathen sanctuaries. 
For their sin they are to be degraded into mere minis- 
terial drudges at the sanctuary, having charge at the gates 
and slaying the sacrifices, but not permitted to approach 
Jehovah in the discharge of proper priestly functions. On 
the other hand, “the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, 
that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of 
Israel went astray from me,” are to be confirmed in their 
priestly office in reward of their fidelity. Thus henceforth 
there shall no longer be priests who are at the same time 
Levites, or Levites who are at the same time priests, but 
two orders of religious officials, a higher order of priests 
and a lower order of Levites.’ 

From the foregoing brief outline it will be seen that 
the effect of modern criticism on the mode of viewing the 
religious history of Israel is serious. It amounts to an 
inversion of the order subsisting between law and prophecy. 
Instead of saying, the law and the prophets, we must say, 
the prophets and the law. The law, in the comprehensive 
sense, was not given by Moses; it came not till the great 
prophets Micah, Hosea; Amos, Isaiah had delivered their 
message. Their scathing criticisms of the religious services 
of a people ungodly in life are therefore not to be regarded 
as a protest against the exaltation of ritual, legitimate, 
ancient, and even di¥Vinely given, above the supreme claims 
_ of morality—a declaration that to obey is better than sacri- 
fice, however important sacrifice in its own place may be— 
but as indirect yet sure evidence that a priestly code, pur- 
porting to be of Mosaic origin, was not then in existence. 
That code, we are given to understand, could not have pro- 

? Vide Ezek. xliv. 9-16, 


170 APOLOGETICS. 


ceeded from Moses, who, as is indicated in Deuteronomy 
and in Hosea,’ was a prophet in vocation and spirit, and 
must therefore, like all the prophets, have attached more 
value to the ethical than to the ritual. It belongs rather 
to the post-prophetic period, to the time when the spirit 
which animated the great prophets began to lose its influence, 
and the legal spirit sought to usurp its place, and men 
under its guidance strove to please God by anxious compli- 
ance with innumerable technical rules; in a word, to the time 
of the return from exile and of the scribe Ezra. And if we 
are to take a critically well-founded view of the religious 
development of Israel, we must recognise three great periods 
or stages in the onward march: Mosaism, having for its 
salient feature the Decalogue ; Prophetism, true to Mosaism, 
and carrying it on to higher issues; Judaism, not without 
valuable characteristics, but inaugurating an era in which 
the prophetic motto, “to obey is better than sacrifice,” 
might be said to have been finally transformed into “ sacri- 
fice the sum of obedience.” 

In comparison with the Zaw and the Prophets, the Hagio- 
grapha are of subordinate importance as sources for a study of 
the religion of Israel. Yet from some of the books contained 
in this division of the Hebrew Scriptures, and very specially 
from the Psalter, much can be learned concerning the spiritual 
life of the Jewish people. According to the traditional view, 
very many of the Psalms are of Davidic authorship, and ex- 
hibit a type of religious thought and feeling prevailing among 
devout Israelites as far back as the eleventh century B.C. 
The tendency of recent eriticism, however, has been greatly 
to reduce the number of Psalms belonging to so early a 
time, and to assign to the collection as a whole a post-exilic 
origin. According to this view, the Psalter is to be regarded 
as the song-book of the second temple, and its value for the 
history of Israel’s religion consists in the bright light which 
it throws on the inner life of the spirit during the legal 
period. It is a pendant to the history of Judaism. 

1 Deut. xviii. 15; Hosea xii. 13. 


THE SOURCES. 171 


A very important question now arises for the apologist. 
What is to be his attitude towards these critical views as 
to the authorship and dates of the component parts of Old 
Testament literature? To this question it may be answered, 
first, that the apologist is not called upon to accept the 
results of modern criticism, or to constitute himself an 
advocate of its claims to scientific certainty. He is en- 
titled to hold himself aloof from critical dogmatism, and to 
keep his personal opinions in a state of suspense. He may 
reasonably excuse himself from coming to a final decision 
on the questions raised on various grounds. He may 
without shame plead the lack of an expert’s knowledge. 
He may further plead that the discussion and solution of 
critical problems do not fall within the scope of general 
apologetic, but belong to a distinct theological discipline, 
that of Biblical Introduction. Once more, he may plead the 
unsettled state of critical opinion. It will be time enough 
for the apologist to dogmatise when criticism has arrived at 
the stage of finality. It is far enough from having reached 
that stage as yet. Not to mention endless diversity of 
view on special points, there are broad contrasts between 
different schools even with reference to the leading critical 
problems. One set of critics call in question the Mosaic 
origin even of the Decalogue,’ another bring under the cate- 
gory of Mosaism, not only the Ten Words, but the principles 
common to the various legal codes.2 Not only is there 
conflict between critics of different schools regarding the 
relative priority of the Deuteronomic and priestly codes, 
but instances are not unknown of the same critic changing 
his mind on the question. Thus Vatke, who in 1835 
in his great work on the Religion of the Old Testament 
maintained the post-exilic origin of the priestly code, in his 
posthumous work on Jntroduction, published in 1886, repre- 


‘So Wellhausen, who thinks that it perhaps belongs to the time of 
Manassch’s reign. Vide his Prolegomena, p. 486. Kuenen, on the other 
hand, regards Moses as the author of the Zen Words. Vide The Religian A 
Israel, p. 274. 

*So Rielm, in his Altestamentliche Theologie, p. 57, 


172 APOLOGETICS. 


sents it as prior to the Deuteronomic code, viewing it as 
a programme of reform, an ideal legislation not actually 
realised till after the exile.’ Nor are the contradictions of 
criticism confined to the legal portions of the Old Testa- 
ment. Even with reference to the prophets wide cun- 
trariety of view obtains. The majority of critics indeed 
regard it as beyond doubt that not a few of the prophetic 
writings can be definitely fixed down to dates antecedent to 
the exile. But there have not been wanting men with suffi- 
cient hardihood to maintain that this is a mistake, and that 
the whole Hebrew Scriptures, including the prophets, are 
post-exilic, and show us merely what the Jews of that late 
period believed concerning their past history.’ 

For these reasons and in these circumstances the attitude 
of the apologist must necessarily be that of one who refuses 
to be deeply committed on critical questions. But on the 
other hand, he cannot go on his way as if nothing had 
happened, or as if he had never heard of modern higher 
criticism. He must adjust himself to the new situation. 
He must take into account opinions confidently advanced 
by others for which he declines to be personally respon- 
sible, to the extent at least of considering how far they 
are compatible or the reverse with the faith he is concerned 
to defend. In this connection it is incumbent on him to 
be on his guard against a jealous temper. Avoiding care- 
fully dogmatism in favour of criticism, he must with at 
least equal care avoid dogmatism against it, in the form of 
hasty conclusions that if the critics are right it is all over 
with revelation, or with the claim of the Scriptures to be in 

1 Hinleitung, p. 402. 

2 So Maurice Vernes in Les resultats de L’Hxegese Biblique, 1890. With 
him agree Ernest Havet and d’Eichtal. Vide Havet’s La Modernité des 
Prophetes. Ina review of this work, reprinted in Les Prophetes d’Israel, 
pp. 121-151, Darmesteter has given a convincing refutation of Havet’s 
theory that the prophetic literature originated at the end of the second 
century B.C., in connection with the struggle of the Jews against the Greek 
kings of Syria. On this theory Assyria really means the Syria of the Seleu- 
cide, and Tiglath Pileser, Sargon, and Sennacherib represent Antiochus 
Epiphanes, Demetrius Nicator, etc. 


THE SOURCES. 173 


any sense a divine book, or of Israel to be an elect people, 
and that therefore the believer must renounce the critics 
and all their works. In the interest of faith it is absolutely 
necessary to make it as independent as possible of all dog- 
matism in reference to matters coming within the sphere 
of scientific inquiry. To this sphere the questions dealt 
with by criticism certainly belong. If the date of a book, 
say of the second half of Isaiah, or of Daniel, can be ascer- 
tained by careful observation of its own characteristics, why 
should it not be? How inept to interdict such an inquiry 
in the supposed interest of faith, how foolish to proclaim 
on the housetop that if the inquiry lead to a certain result 
the faith must be destroyed ! 

The proper apologetic attitude towards criticism is 
essentially the same as that towards the evolutionary 
theory of the origin of the universe. Modern criticism 
yields what may be called an evolutionary theory of the 
origin of Old Testament literature and religion; and the 
two evolutions should be faced with the same spirit of 
fearless trust. The business of the apologist is, in both 
cases alike, to recognise the legitimacy of the inquiry, while 
not dogmatising as to the truth of its results, to acquire 
such an acquaintance with the main lines of thought as 
shall enable him to grasp their drift, and to show if he can 
that the old faith can live with the new science or hypo- 
thesis. With reference to the evolution in the sphere of 
nature, the task has been achieved to the satisfaction of a 
large section of the believing world. With reference to 
the evolution in the sphere of religion, apologetic endeavours 
have hitherto been less abundant and less successful in 
commanding general assent. 

Proceeding in the spirit just explained, we must allow 
our method to be controlled by criticism, so far as to make 
our starting-point what critics of greatest weight and 
authority regard as certain. On this principle we must 
begin our study of the religion of Israel with the prophets. 
In their writings we escape from the mists of critical doubt 


174 APOLOGETICS. 


into the daylight of acknowledged history. The oracles of 
Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc., are for the Old Testa- 
ment what the four Epistles of Paul to the Galatian, 
Corinthian, and Roman Churches are for the New Testa- 
ment,—a firm foundation on which the student of Israel’s 
religious history may safely plant his foot. In both cases 
the authenticity of the relative writings has been called in 
question by a few extremists, but in the judgment of the 
vast majority of critics we may confidently gather from the 
prophetic writings the religious view of the universe cherished 
by the best minds in Israel from the eighth to the sixth 
century B.C., as we may gather from the four above-named 
Epistles of Paul the conception of Christianity entertained 
by the man who was second only to the great Master. 

Our plan, then, is as follows :— 

First, we shall endeavour to form a preliminary general 
idea of the religion of the prophets, noting how they 
thought concerning God, man, the world, and kindred 
topics. Next, we shall try to learn from their writings 
what idea the prophets cherished concerning the nation to 
which they belonged. Happily there are scattered hints 
available for this purpose, not so copious as one might 
wish, yet sufficient; only occasional, yet on that account 
all the more reliable. From these we gather that the 
people of Israel had a remarkable history reaching far back 
into the ancient time; that their fathers had sojourned in 
Egypt, and had been brought out of that land by a remark- 
able man and a remarkable Providence, which seemed to 
point them out as an elect people with a peculiar destiny. 
The prophetic view of Israel’s vocation and history will 
form the subject of a chapter, which will naturally be 
followed by one on the hero of the Exodus, through whom 
a horde of slaves was organised into a nation—that is to 
say, on Moses and Mosaism. From that topic we shall 
revert to Prophetism, now to be regarded as a stage in the 
onward progress of revelation ; in which connection we shall 
have to consider some of the more special characteristics 


THE SOURCES. 175 


of Hebrew prophecy, and, above all, these two—its stern 
assertion of the moral order of the world, and its bright 
inspiring proclamation of the Messianic hope. Thence we 
shall proceed to the study of Judaism, or the religion of 
Israel in the period subsequent to the exile, when we shall 
have to consider the connection of this phase of Israel’s 
religion with the earlier stages, what elements of good 
were in it, and how far it contained the seeds of that 
degenerate type of piety with which the Gospels make us 
familiar under the title of “the righteousness of the scribes 
and Pharisees.” With that counterfeit righteousness 
Judaism, as it appeared within the period covered by 
the Hebrew canonical literature, cannot certainly be 
identified. With whatever defects, it was, on the whole, 
a boon to Israel, and the chief agents connected with it 
were men of pure intention, acting under divine guidance 
- and inspiration. To understand Pharisaism, that dark 
religious background which throws into such bright relief 
the fair image of Jesus, we must pass from the twilight of 
Judaism into the night of legalism, which will form the 
subject of a separate chapter. Having thus considered in 
succession the various stages of Israel’s history from Moses 
to the Christian era, we shall, in two concluding chapters, 
have to consider the Hebrew Scriptures as a literature of 
revelation, treating of their origin and value, and also of 
their defects arising out of their being the literature of the 
preparatory stage of revelation. : 

One other remark is needful to complete the explanation 
of the method of procedure. The conception of Israel as 
an elect people, having a special religious vocation and 
enjoying peculiar privileges, naturally leads to comparison 
of her religious ideas and practices with those of other 
peoples. Such comparisons accordingly will be made, as 
opportunity offers, with the aim of establishing the reality 
of Israel’s election and the superior value of her religion. 
Happily, as will appear, this aim can be attained without 
unjust or ungenerous disparagement of ethnic religion. 


176 APOLOGETICS, 


CHAPTER II. 
THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHETS. 


LITERATURE.—Vatke, Die Religion des Alten Testaments, 
1835; Duhm, Die Theologie der Propheten; Kuenen, The 
Prophets and Prophecy in Israel (translated from the Dutch); 
Professor Robertson Smith, Zhe Prophets of Israel; Green 
(W. H., of Princeton Theol. Sem.), Afoses and the Prophets 
(a review of Robertson Smith’s Old Testament in the Jewish 
Church and The Prophets of Israel, and of Kuenen’s Prophets 
and Prophecy in Israel); Schultz, Altestamentliche Theologie ; 
Riehm, Altestamentliche Theologie; Duff, Old Testament 
Theology, or The History of Hebrew Religion from the Year 
800 B.c., 1891; Professor Robertson, The Early Religion of 
Israel (Baird Lectures for 1889). 


The following sketch is based upon the utterances of the 
series of prophets ranging from Amos to Jeremiah, and 
covering a period of about two centuries. 

In the writings of these prophets Jehovah is, with ever 
growing clearness and emphasis, represented as the one 
supreme true God. The great religious teachers of Israel 
in the eighth and seventh centuries were, speaking broadly, 
monothests, By this statement. is not meant that these 
prophets taught in modern fashion an abstract or meta- 
physical doctrine of monotheism. This was not the way 
of the Hebrew prophets, or of the race to which thev 
belonged, at any time. Their monotheism was practical 
and religious, not theoretical and philosophical. They 
affirmed, not that their God Jehovah was the only possible 
deity, but that He was the Highest, the Mightiest, and the 
Best, and that whatever other gods existed were unworthy 
of regard. Their attitude towards the gods of the surround- 
ing peoples was not one of philosophic scepticism, but 
rather of religious contempt. This contempt, however, is 
expressed in terms so incisive that it amounts to dogmatic 


THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHETS. L77 


denial. The heathen deities are called “lies,”1 « vanities,” 2 
“the work of men’s hands.”® This dialect of scorn is 
common to all the prophets, and grows in intensity in 
each succeeding prophet. It reaches its culmination in 
Jeremiah, in whose prophecies religious monotheism may 
be said to develop into theoretical monotheism, and con- 
tempt to issue in downright denial. He calls heathen 
gods “no gods,” * charges them with utter impotence to do 
either good or evil,> and ridicules the idea of trusting in 
them. On the other hand, he calls Jehovah the King of 
nations, and declares Him to be the true God, the living 
God, and the everlasting King.’ 

This prophetic doctrine of God may be regarded as the 
implicit or instinctive faith of the best in Israel from the 
days of Moses downwards. But there can be no doubt 
that, from the eighth century onwards, it was proclaimed 
by the prophets with an emphasis which made it virtually 
a new faith. A prophet is never a repeater of common- 
places ; when we find him affirming any truth with intensity 
and iteration, we may be sure it is a new truth, at least in 
respect of the amount of conviction with which it is uttered, 
and the connections of thought in which it is introduced. 
The historical situation in which the prophets of the eighth 
and seventh centuries found themselves explains the strength 
with which they asserted the supremacy of Jehovah. At 
that period the fate of Israel began to be involved in the 
movements of the great Eastern monarchies, First the 
Assyrian empire, then the Chaldean, menaced the inde- 
pendence and even the existence of the petty kingdom 
lying between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. When 
these great powers of the East rose above the horizon, 
monotheism became a necessity for the chosen people. It 


1 Amos ii. 4. 
2 Isa. ii. 18, 20; x. 10; xix. 8. In Hebrew, probs translated in 
Authorised Version ‘‘ idols.” 
3 Hos, xiv. 3; Micah v, 13. * Jer. v. 7. 
5 Jer. x. 5. 6 Jer. x, 2-5. 7 Jer. x. 7, 10, 
M 


178 APOLOGETICS. 


was the only way of escape from submission to the vic- 
torious gods of the conqueror. Thus the political calamities 
of Israel became an important factor in her religious educa- 
tion. She learned therefrom to rise above the idea of a 
merely national God, whose relative might, as compared 
with that of other national deities, was decided by the 
issue of battle, to the idea of a God over all, exercising a 
providence over all the nations, and using them alternately 
as the instruments of His righteous government. 

The prophets learnt first, and promptly, the momentous 
lesson. Amos, the earliest of the prophets whose writings 
have been preserved, very distinctly declares Jehovah to 
be the God of all the nations, when he represents Him as 
claiming to have brought the Philistines from Caphtor, and 
the Syrians from Kir, even as He had brought up Israel 
out of the land of Egypt.’ Micah, in the same spirit, calls 
Jehovah “the Lord of the whole earth.”’2 Jeremiah, as 
we have seen, addresses Jehovah as the “ King of nations,” 
and claims for Him, as such, universal reverence. “ Who 
would not fear Thee, O King of the nations? for to Thee 
doth it appertain. ... Jehovah is the true God, He is 
the living God, and an everlasting king: at His wrath the 
earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to 
abide His indignation.” § 

Along with this doctrine of Jehovah’s supremacy over 
the nations naturally goes the conception of Him as 
creating and sustaining the world. Accordingly we find 
these functions very expressly ascribed to the God of Israel 
in the prophetic writings. Thus Amos describes Jehovah 
as Him “that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, 
and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh 
the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places 
of the earth;”* and, again, as one “that maketh the seven 
stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the 
morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth 
for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the 

} Amos ix. 7. 2 Micah iv. 13. 3 Jer. x. 10, * Amos iv. 18. 


THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHETS. 179 


face of the earth.”! In these animated passages God 
appears as the Maker of all things in heaven and on earth, 
and as the sustainer of the course of nature; the ultimate 
cause of all that happens, of the succession of day and 
night, of the ebbing and flowing of the tides, of the tempest 
and the following calm. As was to be expected, the 
doctrine of God’s creative power and universal providence 
appears full-blown in the pages of Jeremiah. “ He hath 
made the earth by His power, He hath established the 
world by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens 
by His discretion. When He uttereth His voice, there is 
a multitude of waters in the heavens, and He causeth the 
vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; He maketh 
lightnings with rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of 
His treasures.” These prophetic representations, it will 
be observed, are in full accord with the Jehovistic records 
of the beginnings of things, wherein the heavens and the 
earth are spoken of as owing their origin to Jehovah 
Elohim? 

The Hebrew prophets, however, it must not be forgotten, 
were not alone in ascribing to their God the attribute 
of creator. Other peoples, such as the Babylonians and 
Pheenicians, bestowed on their national divinities the same 
title. From this it might plausibly be inferred that the 
prophetic doctrine of creation is quite compatible with a 
purely national conception of the creator. If every nation 
thought of its god as a creator, why should we attach any 
importance to the fact that the prophets claimed this 
distinction for the God of Israel? The answer to this is, 
that the prophets did not use the title creator as a mere 


1 Amos v. 8. These two texts are regarded by Wellhausen and Stade as 
later interpolations, on the ground that they disturb the connection. Pro- 
fessor Robertson remarks: ‘‘ Any one with the least sympathy with the 
writers will recognise in them (the passages suspected) the outpouring of 
hearts that were full of the noblest conceptions of the God whom they 
celebrate, and will perceive that they come in most fitly to emphasise the 
context.”—T'he Harly Religion of Israel, p. 320. 

2 Jer. x. 12, 13, 3 Gen, ii, 4 


180 APOLOGETICS. 


expletive, by way of lip-homage, in accordance with Semitic 
fashion. They believed that only one God could create, 
as there was only one world to create; and they argued, 
not from divinity to creative power, but from creative power 
to true divinity. They made power to create the test of 
divinity. Thus Jeremiah asks: “Are there any among 
the vanities of the heathen that can cause rain? or can 
the heavens give showers? Art not Thou He, O 
Jehovah our God? therefore we will wait upon Thee; for 
Thou hast made all these things.” ? 

That the Jehovah of Hebrew prophecy is not merely the 
national God of Israel, but the one true God over all, 
appears very conspicuously from the fact that He is con- 
stantly represented as exercising a wniversal and impartial 
justice. Very instructive in this connection are the two 
opening chapters of Amos, in which Jehovah is exhibited 
as threatening. with condign punishment for their sins, 
through the instrumentality of the Assyrian invader not 
named but ominously referred to as “it,” the various 
nations in and around Palestine lying on the line of the 
conqueror’s march. Three things in this judgment pro- 
gramme are noteworthy, all suggesting the same inference: 
Jehovah, not the national God of Israel, partial to His 
people, but the just Ruler over all. The offences to be 
punished are moral; they are not in all cases offences 
against Israel; and Israel herself is not to be exempted 
from the invading scourge. Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, 
Ammon, and Moab are t6 be subjected to the judicial fire, 
not because they are heathen and do not worship Israel’s 
God, but because they have been guilty of barbarities 
which outrage the laws of universal morality. Damascus 
has threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron, 
and Ammon has done to the devoted city something worse ; 
Gaza and Tyre have been the seats of an inhuman traffic 
in slaves; Edom has pursued his brother in a too relentless 
blood-feud, and “kept his wrath for ever.” In these cases 

1 Jer. xiv. 22, 


THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHETS. tsa 


Israel was the sufferer, and it is mentioned as an aggrava- 
tion of the offence in the case of Tyre, that in making 
slaves of Israelites she had been unmindful of the old 
alliance between herself and Israel. But as if to show 
that it is not because they affect Israel, but because they 
are grave moral offences, that these crimes of nations are 
singled out for punishment, one other offence, that of Moab, 
is mentioned, in which Jehovah’s people is not concerned. 
The offence of Moab is that she has burned the bones of 
the king of Edom into lime—a wanton outrage on the 
common feeling of respect for the dead. 

Still, five out of six of the sins specified are offences 
against Israel, and the fact may seem to justify a suspicion 
of partiality. But the suspicion vanishes when it igs 
observed that Israel herself comes in for a share of the 
impending chastisement. Far from being exempted, she is 
to be in a special degree the subject of Jehovah’s judicial 
severity, just because she is His peculiar people. To the 
race which He has brought up out of the land of Egypt 
Jehovah by the mouth of His prophet says: “You only 
have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I 
will visit upon you all your iniquities.”! This is not the 
kind of utterance we expect from a merely national God, 
whom it would rather suit to say: You only have I known, 
therefore I will defend you, right or wrong, against all 
comers, and with special zeal against this boastful Assyrian 
who approaches my land. This is the language of One 
who has to do with all the nations of the earth, while 
standing in special relations to a particular people, and who 
has a fixed moral character which no special relations can 
be allowed to compromise in the way either of injustice to 
the outside nations or of favouritism to the chosen people. 
Accordingly the transgressions of that’ people are not slurred 
over, but enumerated with a fulness of detail that in more 
than any other instance justifies the formula, “for three 
transgressions and for four.” “Because they sold the 

1 Amos iii. 2. 


162 APOLOGETICS. 


righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; that 
pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, 
and turn aside the way of the meek: and a man and his 
father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy 
name: and they lay themselves down beside every altar 
upon clothes taken in pledge, and in the house of their 
god they drink the wine of such as have been fined.” * 
Such is the black damning list of Israel’s sins, wherein two 
stand out above all others—shameless covetousness and 
shameless sensuality. Such iniquities the God in whom 
the herdman of Tekoa believes cannot endure. He did 
not choose Israel in order to become the patron of in- 
humanity and vileness; perish the chosen race rather than 
that such enormities should go unpunished. This is the 
creed not only of monotheism, but of ethical monotheism. 
It is a high, pure faith in a moral order of the world that 
without respect of persons deals with men and nations 
according to their works. 

In view of such an august moral order it may seem 
difficult to vindicate the idea of election, or special relations, 
in any sense or to any extent. This is a question we shall 
have to consider hereafter. Meantime we remark that the 
very idea of election, or of a special relation sustained by 
God to a particular people, constituted by an act of choice, 
is incompatible with the notion of Jehovah being merely 
the national God of Israel. A national god is not the god 
of his people by choice, but by natural affinity and necessity. 
Bel could no more help» being the god of Babylon, than a 
Babylonian could help being born in a country where Bel 
was worshipped as the national deity. On the other hand, 
a God who becomes related to a particular people by choice 
or covenant is a God who, before the choice, stood in the 
same relations to all, and might have made no choice or a 
different one. He is further a God who, after making a 
choice, does not feel bound by it to partiality in favour of 
the elected people, or to permanence in His relations 

2 Amos ii. 6-8. 


THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHETS. 183 


thereto. He chooses from a purpose in harmony with His 
absolute character, and He will be guided by that purpose 
in all His relations to the chosen. Thus the electing God 
of Hebrew prophecy is in all respects the very antithesis 
of the national gods of heathen Semitic peoples. 

The title, the Holy One of Israel, frequently applied to 
Jehovah by the prophets, especially by Isaiah, seems to 
savour of religious nationalism. When, however, the import 
of the title is carefully considered, it is seen to be in entire 
accord with the monotheistic conception of deity ascribed 
to the prophets on the grounds already mentioned. No 
stress, indeed, is to be laid on the mere epithet “holy.” 
All the gods of all peoples are holy; even the infamous 
gods of the pagan Semites, the patrons of prostitution. 
Even the worshippers of these foul divinities who gave 
themselves up to the vile practices prescribed in the name 
of religion, were called holy women and holy men. The 
term thus applied simply means separated from common to 
religious use, and is perfectly compatible with any degree 
of immorality. The holiness of Jehovah as conceived by the 
prophets is something very different, as we may learn from 
examining the connection in which the title, “The Holy 
One of Israel,” first occurs in Isaiah’s prophecies. It is 
introduced in connection with a severe condemnation of 
the sin of Israel: “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with 
iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that deal corruptly: 
they have forsaken Jehovah, they have despised the Holy 
One of Israel, they are estranged and gone backward.”” 
And note what the sins are that have insulted the divine 
holiness. They are not ritual offences, ignorant or wilful 
breaches of ceremonial rules, neglect of religious services. 
On the contrary, the sinners complained of are scrupulously 
careful in these respects; they are religious ad nauseam. 
What the Holy One finds fault with in Israel is her moral 
offences: sins of injustice and inhumanity. “Thy princes 


are rebellious, and companions of thieves; every one loveth 
1 sa. i, 4. 


184 APOLOGETICS. 


gifts, and followeth after rewards; they judge not the 
fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto 
them.”* This charge throws light on the nature of 
Jehovah’s holiness. It means above all aloofness from 
such misconduct as Israel is guilty of—disapprobation of 
moral evil. The Holy One of Israel is exalted in all 
senses. He is, as Hosea and Micah call Him, God on high, 
raised far above the world of created and finite being; He 
is so exalted in virtue of His being God, so that holiness 
and deity are in a sense synonymous. But the moral 
element in the divine holiness is what the prophets chiefly 
emphasise. And just on that account the Holy One of 
Israel does not in their view belong to Israel. His holiness 
imposes on Israel obligations to be holy, not ritually only 
but really, and exposes her to the risk of forfeiting His 
favour in case she fail to satisfy His just demands. In 
other words, the Holy One of Israel is the Holy One of 
the universe. He is high and lifted up, and “the whole 
earth is full of His glory.” 2 

It does not follow from this that the chosen people, or 
the temple which Isaiah in vision saw filled with the train 
of the Holy One, was nothing to Jehovah, or that the pro- 
phets who had risen above religious nationalism in their 
conception of deity must therefore lightly reconcile them- 
selves to the abandonment of either. For them as for 
Providence, it is true, the religious interest was supreme, 
and they understood more or less clearly that that interest 
might be promoted even by the misfortunes of Israel. 
Nevertheless, it might well appear to them that the ex- 
istence of Israel in whole or in part, and of the holy place, 
was necessary to the preservation of the true religion, So 
long as they believed this they would maintain the inde- 
structibility of the divine state and the inviolability of 
Jehovah’s sanctuary; for with all the prophets it was 
an axiom that God’s end in choosing Israel could not fail, 
His gracious purpose must be fulfilled. This accordingly 

1 Isa. i. 23. * Isa. vi. 3 


THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHETS. 185 


is the position taken up by the prophet Isaiah, That 
Jerusalem or Zion, Jehovah’s seat, is inviolable, is for him 
a fixed principle, which he resolutely maintains in the 
most desperate circumstances. Even when the Eastern 
conqueror is at the gate with a mighty army, and destruc- 
tion seems inevitable, he hurls defiance at the invader in 
such terms as these: “The virgin, the daughter of Zion, 
hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter 
of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. Whom hast 
thou reproached and blasphemed ? and against whom hast 
thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high ? 
even against the Holy One of Israel ;” concluding with 
the firm declaration that Sennacherib’s army should not 
enter Jerusalem: “For I will defend this city to save it, 
for mine own sake, and my servant David’s sake.”! Isaiah 
was prepared for much in the way of judgment on Jehovah’s 
people for her sins. He predicted that in threescore and 
five years Ephraim should be broken in pieces, and cease 
to be a people? He expected that even Judah would 
suffer severely, so as to resemble a tree cut down to the 
stump. But he believed that in her case a stock would 
survive all calamities, a holy seed, a faithful remnant? It 
was this faith that supported him through the crisis of 
the Assyrian invasion, and which was so marvellously 
justified by the sudden destruction of Sennacherib’s host. 
It was not faith in a merely national god, bound in 
honour and as a matter of course to defend his people. It 
was at bottom faith in the indestructibility of the true 
religion, with which at the moment the continuance of the 
state of Judah seemed inseparably bound up. 

In Isaiah’s time the interest of the true religion and 
the maintenance of the Jewish state were indeed practically 
one. And, owing to the limitations of prophetic vision, it 
might well be that he deemed the two things permanently 
inseparable. The fact, however, was not so, and within a 
century this had become clear to recipients of prophetic 

* Isa, xxxvii. 22, 28, 35, 2 Isa. vii. 8. 3 Tsa, vi, 18, 


186 APOLOGETICS, 


inspiration. Jeremiah, holding firmly Isaiah’s principle, 
the common faith of all Hebrew prophets, that the true 
religion must prosper and Jehovah’s purpose be fulfilled, 
draws from it an opposite inference; not that Judah must 
be saved, and Zion remain inviolable, but that Judah must 
go into captivity, and Jerusalem and the temple be de- 
stroyed. Jeremiah believed negatively that these calamities 
might happen without detriment to the religious interest, 
and positively that by their occurrence that interest would 
be advanced. What had happened in the interval between 
the two prophets to bring about this marked change of 
view? Well, for one thing, Isaiah’s long ministry had 
borne its natural fruit. He had raised up a band of dis- 
ciples, “a community of true faith able to hold together 
even in times of persecution, and conscious that its re- 
ligion rested on a different basis from that of the idolatrous 
masses.” This was the birth of a Church as distinct from 
a nation: a community of men united not by mere 
nationality, though belonging to the same people, but by 
fellowship in religious faith.2 If we accept the view that 
the concentration of worship at the one sanctuary insisted 
on in Deuteronomy had taken place shortly before Jeremiah 
began to prophesy, this event also would not be without 
influence in making religion independent of political con- 
ditions. It involved that devout souls had to learn to be 
religious without daily access to sanctuaries such as they 
enjoyed when every town and district had its high place. 
Dispensing with sacrifice’ and sacred festivals, except at 
stated intervals at the central sanctuary, was an education 
for dispensing with them altogether during the exile, with- 
out degenerating into heathenism. In some such way it 
came to pass that Jeremiah could contemplate the destruc- 
tion of state and temple without fear. He felt sure that 
the divine interest would survive these disasters. Nay, as 


1W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, p. 262. 
2 The Prophets of Israel, p. 275. Professor Smith’s whole discussion of 
the contrast between Isaiah and Jeremiah is very instructive, 


THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHETS. 187 


has been suid, he ventured to hope that it would be pro- 
moted thereby, that through exile God’s people would be 
brought nearer to the happy times of the New Covenant, 
when all, from the least to the greatest, should know 
Jehovah. Hence the sublime calmness with which he 
intimates to those whose constant cry was, “ The temple 
of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah,” 
that the temple in which they trusted might share the 
fate of the holy place at Shiloh, “Go ye now unto 
my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at 
the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my 
people Israel.” ? 

We have thus satisfied ourselves from every point of 
view that the religion of the prophets did not consist in 
the worship of a merely national God called Jehovah. It 
may be strictly described as an ethical monotheism. Of 
such a faith, individualism and universalism are obvious 
consequences, and we naturally inquire whether any traces 
of these developments can be discovered in the prophetic 
writings. Now, as to the former, which points to a per- 
sonal relation of God to the individual spirit, it has to be 
remembered that in the ancient Hebrew way of thinking, 
the nation not the individual is the unit. Jehovah is the 
God of Israel as a whole. He is the Maker of Israel, who 
has given her her place in history. His covenant is with 
Israel. His promises and threatenings, His mercies and 
judgments, concern immediately the people at large, and 
only indirectly the individuals who belong to it. We need 
not therefore be surprised if we find this point of view 
predominant in Hebrew prophecy. And yet we should 
feel disappointed if we failed to discover at least the 
rudiments of a new way of thinking in harmony with a 
monotheistic creed, traces of the idea that the individual 
man is of some account to God. Prophecy itself, by its 
very existence, is a witness to this truth. For what does 
it mean but this, that God reveals Himself, “ His secret,’ 2 

1 Jor, vii. 4, 12. * Amos iii. 7, 


x | 


188 APOLOGETICS, 


the present truth, not to or through the nation, but to and 
through the individual spirit. It would be strange, indeed, 
if the men whom God so highly favoured, “His servants 
the prophets,” * had not a word to say in behalf of ordinary 
men, but allowed them to lose themselves in the national 
organism. But the fact is not so. Even in Isaiah the 
dawn of individualism may be descried. The Maker of 
Israel is also called the Maker of man. “At that day 
shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have 
respect to the Holy One of Israel.”2 A century later the 
new thought has assumed larger dimensions, In two ways 
Jeremiah constitutes himself an advocate of the claims of 
the individual: by contradicting the old adage about the 
fathers eating sour grapes and the children’s teeth being 
set on edge, and by claiming for the individual, however 
insignificant, an immediate knowledge of God? In the 
one case he asserts personal responsibility against the law 
of heredity, and in the other he vindicates the independ- 
ence of the individual in his religious relations to God of 
all mediation by priestly representatives. It is a great 
word, that spoken by the prophet in his oracle of the New 
Covenant, concerning the immediate knowledge of God: 
greater than he knows. It portends religious revolution; 
it anticipates a time when the true worshipper in every 
land shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. 

In every land, for the fellowship of the individual spirit 
with God involves universalism. That a universal world- 
wide religion was a necessary consequence of their own 
principles, was not as clear to the prophets as it is to us. 
God never reveals to men truth, with daylight brightness, 
so long before the time of fulfilment. In the prophetic 
age, the light of universalism was but the light of a star 
in the night. But to that extent it did shine even in the 
eighth century B.C. witness the oracle of the mountain of 
Jehovah's house, preserved both by Isaiah and by Micah. 


2 Amos iii. 7. 4:Isa. xvii. 7; 
3 Jer. xxxi. 30, 34. 4 Isa. ii, 1-5; Micah iv. 1-5, 


THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHETS. 189 


This remarkable prophecy, apparently proceeding from some 
older prophet, points to something higher than a political 
influence exerted on surrounding tribes by a reformed 
Israel, in which the ideal of a holy nation with a just, 
wise king at its head has been realised. The very fact 
that both Isaiah and Micah deemed the anonymous utter- 
ance worthy of embodiment in their own prophecies, may 
be taken as evidence that its meaning is not exhausted 
by so comparatively commonplace an idea. It predicts, 
surely, the extension of Israel’s religion among the nations, 
the spread of the knowledge and fear of Jehovah, and the 
establishment of peace through community in faith and 
worship. The fair picture is similar to that presented in 
Isaiah’s own prediction of a happy time when Israel shall 
be a third with Egypt and with Assyria, all three blessed 
of Jehovah and owned by Him as His united people: 
“Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of 
my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.”* Egypt and 
Assyria, the great rival powers between which the petty 
state of Israel was ever in danger of being crushed, repre- 
sent the outside nations—the world beyond the pale of 
the chosen people. And the meaning is that in the good 
time coming the distinction between that people and 
heathendom shall cease. Jehovah shall own as His chosen 
all the representative heathen nations, applying to each of 
them epithets expressive of peculiar and intimate relations: 
“My people,” “the works of my hands,” equivalent in 
import to the epithet, “mine inheritance,” applied to 
Israel, A beautiful poetic dream, we may think, but very 
unlikely, this union in the true religion. But is it more 
unlikely than concord and peace between three such peoples 
in the lower sphere of politics? The prophetic mind 
lived in the region of improbable and apparently impossible 
ideals. And this dream of Isaiah’s, whether realisable or 
not, is one which would naturally suggest itself to one 
who believed that Jehovah was the sole true God. What 
1 Isa, xix, 24, 25, 


190 APOLOGETICS, 


more desirable than that the true God should be universally 
recognised; how could earnest believers in Him help 
cherishing such a desire ? 

Such was the religion of the prophets, such their con- 
ception of God and of His relations to the world, to the 
nations, to Israel, and to man. It is admittedly a unique 
phenomenon in the religious history of the human race, 
rising above all other ancient thoughts of deity in solitary 
grandeur. Whence came it, how is it to be accounted 
for? This is a question not easy to answer on naturalistic 
principles. Various suggestions have been made, the most 
plausible being that of Renan, that the religion of Israel 
as seen at its best in the prophets was the outcome of a 
monotheistic tendency inherent in the Semitic races. Grant- 
ing the tendency, which however has been gravely disputed, 
how did it come about that it attained its proper develop- 
ment only in the Hebrew member of a large family ? 
Reference has already been made to the educative effect of 
the appearance on Israel’s horizon of the great Eastern 
power ; and there can be no question that the new political 
situation would tend to widen the thoughts of observing 
and reflecting men. But the rise of the Assyrian power 
could not create the prophets, or the prophetic type of 
religious thought; at most it could only stimulate into a 
quicker and ampler growth seeds of thought pre-existing 
in prophetic minds. It is unnecessary to say that the 
religious ideas of the prophets are not a mere reflection of 
the current opinion of their countrymen. Their constant 
complaints against prevailing religious fashions are con- 
clusive evidence of this. The prophets were not echoes. 
They were not the mouthpiece of the majority. They 
were in a hopeless minority—a remark, by the way, which 
applies to all the men of revelation. The men whose 
golden, imperishable utterances are recorded in the Bible, 
whether in the Old or in the New Testament, were all 
men whose back was at the wall fighting against heavy 
odds, and who seemed to their contemporaries heretics and 


THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHETS. 191 


blasphemers, For their message was ever some new word 
of God, which blind followers cf religious tradition refused 
to hear. How strange that those who pay the most 
ostentatious homage to a book thus originating should be 
in spirit the children of the men who did their best to 
prevent it from coming into existence ! 

The prophets themselves had no doubt as to whence 
their knowledge of God came. It was, they felt, a revela- 
tion direct from heaven. It was in this belief they spoke 
unfamiliar, unwelcome truth; by this belief they were 
emboldened to speak in the face of all possible contradic- 
tion. They could not help themselves: they must utter 
the thought that by divine inspiration had arisen in their 
minds, The word of Jehovah was as a fire in their heart. 
In the expressive language of Amos: “The lion hath roared, 
who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can 
but prophesy ?”! What had God spoken? That Israel, 
just because she was Jehovah’s chosen, must be specially 
punished for her iniquities. In this practical ethical 
manner does the truth come home to the prophet’s heart 
that Jehovah is no merely national partial deity. And in 
this instance we can see how true is the saying that the 
secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; ‘in other 
words, that moral simplicity is a condition of receiving 
divine revelations. “Surely,” says Amos, “the Lord God 
will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His 
servants the prophets.” Unless the prophets had been 
exceptionally pure-hearted men they would have remained 
as ignorant of God’s secret as their fellow-countrymen. 
They enjoyed the privilege of initiation because they were 
proof against common prejudices and passions, and loved 
righteousness more than country. They so heartily hated 
wrong—sgreed, oppression, cruelty, vileness—that it was 
impossible for them to believe that any prerogative, sup- 
posed or real, could screen a wicked nation from the 
punitive action of the moral order of the world. Israel 

? Amos iii, 8, ? Amos iii. 7, 


192 APOLOGETICS. 


might be God’s beloved, but Israel must suffer and even 
perish if she played the harlot. In a word, the ethical 
monotheism of Hebrew prophecy has for one of its neces- , 
sary presuppositions the intense ethicalism of the prophets 
themselves, 


CHAPTER III, 
THE PROPHETIO IDEA OF ISRAEL’S VOCATION AND HISTORY, 


LITERATURE.—Trench, The Desire of all Nations (the Hul- 
sean Lecture for 1846); Maurice, The Religions of the World 
and their Relations to Christianity (Boyle Lecture for 1846); 
Ewald, Die Lehre der Bibel vom Gott, Band I. (translated 
by T. & T. Clark, contains Theory of Revelation and State- 
ment on Revelation in Heathendom and the Worth of Pagan 
Religion) ; Duhm, Die Lheologie der Propheten ; Bunsen, God 
in History ; Hegel, Religions-Philosophie ; Temple, “ The Edu- 
cation of the World” in Essays and Reviews ; Bruce, The Chief 
Lind of Revelation ; Ina Mundi (Essay 4th, “ The Preparation 
in History for Christ”). 


In last chapter we saw that the prophets regarded Israel 
as an elect people. There this view came before us inci- 
dentally, simply in its bearing on the prophetic idea of God, 
as contributing to the proof that Jehovah was not merely 
the national God of Israel, but the God of the whole earth 
who had freely chosen Israel to be a peculiar people. In 
the present chapter the subject of Israel’s election will be 
considered under a wider aspect and in more varied relations, 
in connection with prophetic ideas of Israel’s vocation and 
past history, and with the religious condition of the world 
at large. 

It will hardly be necessary to offer further proof that 
the idea of election was present to the mind of the prophets 
from the eighth century onwards. It has been asserted, 
indeed, that it is only in the writings of the unknown 
prophet of the exile, to whom we owe the second part of 


PROPHETIC IDEA OF ISRAEL'S VOCATION , ETC. 193 


Isaiah, that that idea begins to play its part,’ and it is 
certainly true that it occupies a place of exceptional 
prominence in that remarkable group of prophecies. But 
the idea, if not the very word election, is traceable in all 
the prophets of the eighth century. 


It finds very distinct expression in the words of Amos, 
already quoted: “ You only have I known of all the families 
of the earth.”? It underlies the words put into the mouth 
of Jehovah by Hosea, “ When Israel was a child, then I loved 
him, and called my son out of Egypt,”’ which carry the elec- 
tion back to the time of the Exodus. Isaiah echoes Hosea’s 
thought when he represents God as complaining, “ Hear, O 
heavens, and give ear, O earth: for Jehovah hath spoken: I 
have nourished and brought up children, and they have 
rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass 
his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth 
not consider.”* The thought recurs in the song of the vine- 
yard, in which Israel is compared to a choice vine planted in 
Jehovah’s vineyard and tended with the utmost care® In 
varied language Micah repeats the divine complaint, as 
reported by his brother prophet: “Hear ye, O mountains, 
Jehovah’s controversy, and ye strong foundations of the 
earth: for Jehovah hath a controversy with His people, and 
he will plead with Israel. O my people, what have I done 
unto thee ? and wherein have I wearied thee ? testify against 
me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and 
redeemed thee out of the house of servants ; and I gent 
before thee Moses, Aaron, and M iriam,” &- 


The one thought running through all these passages is: 
special favours conferred by God on Israel, imposing on 
her special obligations, The God of the whole earth has 
distinguished Israel from other nations by making her His 
peculiar people, His son, His vine, and He expects from the 
chosen race corresponding fidelity, obedience, and fruitful- 
ness. And He complains that His just expectations have 


? Duhm, Die Theologie der Propheten, p. 282. 2 Amos iii. 2, 
* Hos, xi. 1. The same idea is still more pathetically ex; ressed by the 
comparison of Israel to a wife, which pervades Hosea’s prophecies. 
# Isa, i. 2, 3, S160. ¥.-1-7, § Micah vi, 2-4, 
N 


194 APOLOGETICS. 


not been realised, making His complaint to the heavens and 
the earth, to the universe of being, of which not less than 
of Israel He is Maker and Lord. 

From these prophetic utterances it is obvious that Israel 
is not only an elect people, but that she has been elected 
for a purpose. God has chosen her not merely to privilege, 
that she may be more fortunate than other peoples, but that 
she may fulfil a high vocation. The nature of that vocation 
is variously indicated. The prophet of the exile puts it 
thus: “This people have I formed for myself; they shall 
show forth my praise.”? The most distinct statement of 
God’s purpose in choosing Israel is given in Ex. xix. 5, a 
sentence which, at whatever date written, has a genuine 
prophetic ring: “ Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice 
indeed, and keep my covenant, ye shall be a peculiar 
treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is 
mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and 
an holy nation.” Israel called to be a kingdom of God, a 
community of men devoted to God and to righteousness— 
such is the divine ideal as proclaimed from Mount Sinai, 
with which all prophetic utterances consent. In this view 
of Israel’s vocation it may be difficult to satisfy impartial 
students of her history that her election was a reality. It 
is by what a people does that the world judges whether she 
be an elect people or not. But did Israel realise in her 
history the divine ideal of a holy nation? Was it not the 
constant complaint of the prophets that she had failed to 
do so? God looked for grapes, and behold wild grapes; 
“for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, 
but behold a cry.”2 It is easier to see the reality of 
[srael’s election when we think of her as chosen to receive 
the knowledge of the true God and to be the home of the 
true religion. In that view her election is a fact, not 
mercly a theological idea. As a matter of fact the religion 
of Israel, by comparison with the religions of the Gentiles, 
is the true religion—the best thing the world has seen, 


1 Isa. xliii, 21. 2 Isa. v. 7. 


PROPHETIC IDEA OF ISRAEL'S VOCATION, ETC. 195 


the best thing possible. Her idea of God, as formu- 
lated by her noblest sons, is her glory.’ As the vehicle 
through which God communicated to the world the 
worthiest thoughts concerning Himself, Israel realised her 
vocation by producing the prophets. No matter how far 
short the mass of the people fell in thought and in conduct, 
God’s purpose was saved from being stultified by the 
appearance in due time of men like Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, and the great prophet of the exile. It was worth 
while planting a vine that was to bear such generous fruit. 
If the chosen people perish, no matter; Hebrew prophecy 
remains, an imperishable treasure, proof to all time that 
God took in hand no vain task when He became the 
religious instructor of the child whom He brought out of 
Egypt, beginning at the beginning, and playing the part of 
nurse to the infant Ephraim, teaching him to go, taking 
him by the arms to encourage him in his first attempts.? 
The permanent results of that divine training are the sum 
of moral duty in the Decalogue, the grand conception of 
a kingdom of God acting as a ferment in society, the true 
idea of God as the Maker and Ruler of the world, as One 
who Himself delights in the exercise of lovingkindness, 
judgment, and righteousness? and who requires of His 
worshippers, above all things, “to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with God.” 

The prophetic references to Israel’s past history are all 
dominated by the idea of election. The interest of the 
prophets in that history lies in the proofs it affords of God’s 
gracious favour and of the obligations thence arising. 
They use the past to enforce the lessons of the present. 
Their references, therefore, to ancient times are incidental 
and comparatively few, their business being not to chronicle 
but to preach. Though few, however, these occasional 
allusions are important, and cover the outstanding events of 
the memorable story of Israel’s beginnings. There are slight 


1 Isa. Ix. 19: ‘‘Thy God thy glory.” 3 Hos. xi. 3 
3 Jer. ix. 24, * Micah vi, 8, 


196 APOLOGETICS. 


hints concerning the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,’ 
more numerous and explicit statements concerning the 
Egyptian bondage, the Exodus, and the sojourn in the 
wilderness.2. These historical allusions, taken together, give 
us an outline of Israel’s early fortunes, such as might have 
been gathered from one of the documents out of which the 
Pentateuch was ultimately constructed, say the Jehovistic, 
and which may actually have been the source whence the 
‘prophets drew their information. The question has been 
asked, What is the value of these notices? and the answer 
of some critics is that they yield us only the idea which 
was entertained of Israel’s early history in the eighth century 
z.c. Some have gone so far as to doubt the reality of the 
sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus, and to regard even 
Moses as a legendary personage, not to speak of the 
patriarchs, whose names are supposed to denote tribes 
rather than individuals, and whose family story is con- 
ceived to be a legendary representation of the relations 
subsisting between the group of peoples to which the Beni- 
Israel belonged. The more sober-minded critics, however, 
regard the Egyptian episode and the redemptive work of 
Moses as unquestionable facts, and are not indisposed to 
find some historic material even in the patriarchal story. 
These critical questions do not vitally concern us here: 
they may seriously affect the view to be taken of the 
Hebrew Scriptures, but they are of subordinate importance 
in relation to the purpose we have now in view. The 
important question for us is, Is the prophetic concep- 
tion of Israel’s past true, at least in principle if not in 
detail ? 

As has been stated, the prophets look at Israel’s past 
in the light of the idea of election. Thus Micah writes: 
“Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to 
Abraham, which Thou hast sworn unto our fathers from 

1 Hos. xii. 4, 13; Micah vii. 20; Isa. xxix. 22. 
2 Amos ii. 9, 10; v. 25; ix. 7; Hos. ii, 15; viii. 18; ix. 38, 6; xi 15 
xii. 9,18; xiii. 4,5; Micah vi. 3, 4; vii. 15. 


PROPHETIC IDEA OF ISKAEL’S VOUATION, ETC. 197 


the days of old,”? implying that God made a covenant 
with the patriarchs, and promised them special blessings. 
And Hosea introduces Jehovah, saying, “I am the Lord 
thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no 
god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.”? In general 
form the prophetic doctrine is that in the beginning of 
Israel’s history God in His providence acted towards her as 
an electing God. If they were mistaken in that, their 
prophetic inspiration is compromised; but if they were 
not mistaken, their prophetic inspiration stands intact, even 
if they were not perfectly informed in special matters of 
fact; for their function, as already said, was not to narrate 
facts, but to teach the right point of view for reading truly 
the religious significance of Israel’s whole history. The 
creation of Israel, like the creation of the world, may have 
been a much more complicated process than it appears in 
the sacred page; and the secular history of the process, if 
it could be written, might assume a very different appear- 
ance in many respects.to the biblical, just as the scientific 
history of the physical creation differs widely from that 
given in the first chapter of Genesis. But the main point 
is that throughout the period of obscure beginnings God 
was forming a people whose destiny it was to give to the 
world the true religion. As the story of the beginnings is 
told in the Pentateuch, and more briefly in the Prophets, 
that is very apparent; and the merit of the story so told 
is that it does make the religious lesson so apparent. And 
if we are inclined to receive the lesson we shall not feel 
tempted to undue scepticism, but be ready to receive the 
story of the patriarchs, and of the Exodus, and of Moses, as 
substantially true; as just such a history as Israel was 
likely to have, if she was to be the divine instrument for 
introducing the true religion. 

It is not necessary to suppose that the early generations 
of Israelites were conscious of their high destiny, or con- 
ceived of the events that were happening as signs of a 

1 Micah vii. 20. * Hos. xiii, 4, 


198 APOLOGETICS, 


divine elective purpose towards them. They might be an 
elect people, yet for a while remain unconscious of the 
fact. It is conceivable that Israel first attained to clear 
consciousness of her vocation through the prophets, and 
that in the initial stage of her history she thought of 
Jehovah, not as the God of the whole earth choosing her 
for a peculiar people, but simply as a national god doing 
his best for the people to which he was nationally related. 
Even if the fact were so, she might still be the subject of 
such a choice from the first. I am far from thinking that 
the fact was indeed so, or that the generation of the Exodus 
was as completely in the dark as some modern critics 
imagine. An event of such magnitude as the deliverance 
out of Egypt could hardly take place without exercising 
an illuminating influence on susceptible spirits, and one can 
well believe that the prophetic mind of Moses anticipated 
the great discovery of the eighth century B.c., and read the 
Exodus in the light of an elective purpose of grace towards 
the emancipated people. The gospel of the Exodus, con- 
tained in Ex. xix. 5, already quoted, may have been 
formulated as it there stands long after the time of Moses, 
but there is no good reason to doubt that it truly reflects 
his thought. Looking back on what Jehovah had done 
unto the Egyptians, and considering how He had borne the 
enslaved race, as on eagle’s wings, out of the land of 
bondage, he took out of the wondrous story this meaning: 
the one true God is going to make out of my despised and 
down-trodden people a great nation—great, not in numbers 
or in warlike power, but in character, a kingdom of God 
in the earth. 

It may not be so easy to feel quite sure that the gospel 
of election in Abraham’s call is historical, and not a 
projection backwards into the dawn of Israel’s history of 
the prophetic conception of her destiny. The latter 
alternative might be admitted compatibly with the recogni- 
tion of the ideal truth of the construction put by the 
prophets on the story of Abraham’s life, and even of the 


PROPHETIC IDEA OF ISRAEL'S VOCATION, ETC. 199 


substantial accuracy of the main outlines of the story. 
The call of the patriarch implies some such fact basis as 
this, that he left the land of his birth partly, at least, from 
motives of religious discontent, that he wandered westward 
in search of another place of abode, and that on his arrival 
in Canaan the thought took possession of his heart that 
that land would become the home of a people sprung from 
his loins, destined to play a remarkable part in history. 
These facts, read with a prophetic eye, were sufficient to re- 
veal a divine intention such as is expressed in the call, to 
separate Abraham from his own people, and make him the 
father of a new race that should occupy a land specially 
prepared for them, and be there a peculiar people, worship- 
ping the true God, and communicating eventually the true 
religion to the world. To Abraham himself the facts 
might mean much less, His departure from his native 
country might be to his consciousness the result of an 
irresistible impulse, rather than of a deliberate purpose ; the 
religious motive might be a vague dissatisfaction with 
prevalent religious beliefs and practices, rather than a new 
clearly conceived idea of God; the hope of founding a 
nation, peculiar in character and vocation, might be to his 
feeling only a persistent presentiment of which no account 
could be given, a sort of fixed idea, for cherishing which a 
man might be reckoned a madman or a sage, according to 
the event, If this were Abraham’s state of mind at the 
period of the migration, then he would not be conscious of 
receiving such a call as the narrative in Genesis reports. 
Nevertheless that call gives the true ideal significance of 
the events as I have supposed them to happen. 

The closing words of the call of Abraham, “ In thee 
shall all the families of the earth be blessed (or bless 
themselves),” imply that Israel’s election had a reference 
to the general good of the world, that she was chosen, not 
for her own sake merely, but for the sake of mankind at 
large. It must be so. Election involves universalism. 
It is a method by which the few are qualified to bless the 


900 APOLOGETICS. 


many. The election of Israel, we saw, involved universal- 
ism in reference to the idea of God: the electing God is 
apso facto the God over all. What is now insisted on is that 
election equally involves universalism in reference to the 
vocation of the elect. Nations are never chosen for their 
own sakes, and therefore nations which have never done 
any good worth speaking of, except to themselves, cannot 
with any propriety be called elect nations. The Chinese 
nation has lasted so long, and is still so vigorous, that one 
might be tempted to think her a chosen people peculiarly 
favoured of Heaven. But, populous and long - lasting 
beyond comparison though she be, China is not worthy of 
the name, because she has lived only for herself. More 
deserving the honourable designation is a small people 
which gives birth to a great boon for mankind, and dies in 
childbirth. Such a people was Israel. A very insignifi- 
cant people numerically, compared with China; but that 
is no drawback. It is the way of Providence to select 
small nations to be its chosen instruments; and it is a way 
of wisdom, because it serves to make clear that the import- 
ance of a people lies not in its numbers, but in the 
contribution which it makes to the higher good of the 
world. 

Though a petty people, Israel seemed destined by her 
whole history, and even by her very geographical position, 
to be the source of a universal influence in the sphere of 
religion. From first to last she came into contact with all 
the great nations of antiquity. She came originally from 
the valley of the Euphrates, the seat of great Eastern 
monarchies. She went down to Egypt and sojourned long 
enough there to learn the ways of the children of Ham. 
Then she settled in the land of promise, through which ran 
the great highway between Egypt and the East, along 
which in later centuries the armies of mighty nations 
were to march to conquest or defeat. To the ambition of 
Oriental despotism she at length fell a victim, and in 
consequence returned a captive to the land whence she 


PROPHETIC IDEA OF ISRAEL'S VOCATION, ETL. 201 


had migrated. Her later fortunes brought her under the 
dominion of the great powers of the West. Egypt, Assyria, 
Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome were in succession her 
masters and her teachers. It might have been expected 
that such an experience would have developed in her a 
cosmopolitan spirit. It did not, except in the few. But 
the “great dialectic of the world’s history”? did tend 
to develop in this people the true idea of God, and when 
that had gained adequate expression through the voice of 
prophecy it was a permanent gain to the world, whatever 
became of the people among whom it originated, and 
however they might fail to realise the value of their own 
discovery. 

The principle of election applied to religion creates an 
apologetic problem with reference to the heathen world. 
Election to distinction in philosophy or art causes no 
difficulty, because, however important in their own place, 
these things can hardly be said to belong to the chief end 
or chief good of man. But religion, and conduct as 
affected by it, are of vital concern to every man, both for 
this life and for the next, and if the election of one people 
meant the exclusion from divine mercy and grace of all 
other peoples it would necessarily appear to the enlightened 
Christian conscience open to grave objection, and even 
altogether incredible. The question thus raised must 
always have presented a difficulty to men imbued with the 
spirit of Christ, but it has become more acute within the 
last half century, since the religions of the world have been 
made the subject of comparative study. Within that 
period the apologetic attitude towards Gentile religion has 
undergone a great change. Since the science of compara- 
tive religion came into vogue the modern mind has resiled 
from the pessimistic views of ethnic religions entertained 


1 The expression is Vatke’s. Vide Die Religion des Alten Testaments, 
p. 440. Vatke deals with the religion of Israel on the principles of the 
Hegelian philosophy in a masterly way, and with a breadth of treatmes, 
worthy of Hegel himself. 


202 APOLOGETICS, 


by the early apologists, and still widely prevalent in the 
Church. The point of view occupied by the apologists of 
the patristic period was a very simple one. They held, 
and sought to prove, that the pagan religions, and especi- 
ally those of Greece and Rome, were false, corrupt, and 
corrupting, and that the little truth that was in them was 
borrowed from Hebrew sources. Some, indeed, of the 
more large-minded and philosophic fathers, such as Justin 
Martyr, recognised elements of truth in pagan writers which 
had not come to them from without by a borrowing 
process, but rather from the inward illumination of the 
Logos, the light “ which lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world.” Now Christian apologists are more 
inclined to sympathise with the opinion expressed by an 
eminent student of the science of religion that “every 
religion had some truth, nay, was a true religion, was the 
only religion: possible at the time.”1 No professed 
apologist, probably, would care to adopt this precise 
language, or to endorse so optimistic an estimate; but 
most recent writers on apologetic have shown a disposition 
to go as far in that direction as is consistent with main- 
taining the supreme worth of the Christian faith. The 
keynote of this more genial modern apologetic was struck 
by Archbishop Trench in his Hulsean Lectures for 1846, 
entitled, Christ the Desire of all Nations; or, The Uncon- 
scious Prophecies of Heathendom. In the same year Mr. 
Maurice delivered a course of lectures on the Boyle founda- 
tion on The Religions of the World, and their Relations 
to Christianity, in which the same general view was set 
forth, which was only what was to be expected from one 
who, more than most men, believed in the possibility of 
finding sermons in stones, and good in everything. 

Besides the phrase, “ the desire of all nations,” so happily 
chosen by Trench to suggest and justify a hopeful, kindly 
view of pagan religion, use has been made, for the same 
purpose, of another biblical expression, that of Paul in his 

1 Max Miller, Lectures on the Science of Religion, p. 261. 


PROPHETIC IDEA OF ISRAEL'S VOCATION, ETc. 203 


Epistle to the Galatians, “the fulness of the time.” The 
apostle himself employed the expression in an apologetic 
interest, his purpose being so to exhibit the relation between 
Judaism and Christianity as at once to recognise the im- 
portance of the former as a preparatory discipline, and to 
justify its supersession by the latter when it had served its 
end. In modern times attempts have been made to give 
to Paul’s idea a wider application, and to use his happy 
phrase as a compendious formula for the whole religious 
history of mankind, its attraction for philosophic minds 
being that it makes it possible to recognise the relative 
value of all the great historical religions, while reserving 
for Christianity the distinction of being the absolute reli- 
gion! The general truth underlying such attempts is that 
the whole religious history of mankind, up till the birth of 
Christ, may be brought under the category of preparation, 
which does not commit us to an optimistic view of ethnic 
religions, as these might be to a large extent fruitless 
experiments to find out God, and yet help to prepare the 
nations for welcoming Christ as the Light of the world. 
These modern views may be justified by the facts 
brought to light by the scientific study of religion, and 
they are certainly such as it well becomes Christians to 
cherish. But the question is, Can they be entertained 
compatibly with acceptance of the prophetic view of Israel 
as an elect race chosen by Providence to receive and trans- 
mit the true knowledge of God? If not, then our Christian 
geniality is in conflict with our reverence for prophetic 
revelation, and we are painfully divided against ourselves. 
The question here is not whether the tone of the modern 
Christian mind in reference to Gentile religion is reflected 
in all parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is conceivable 
that the prophetic idea of Israel as an elect people, properly 
understood, justifies and even demands a more hopeful 
view of Gentile religion, and a more kindly feeling towards 


l Vide Hegel, Religions-Philosophie ; bunsen, God in History ; Bishop 
Temple on ‘‘ The Education of the World”' in Essays and Reviews. 


204 APOLOGETICS. 


pagans than is to be found in some parts of these writings 
It has been said that the people of Israel did not at first 
think of themselves as a chosen race, and that when at 
length they did begin to entertain this opinion, their attitude 
towards Gentiles was one of bitter exclusiveness. It may 
be so, but what then? We should simply have to include 
the indications of such a state of feeling to be found in 
Old Testament literature among the element of legalism 
traceable therein—the elements which show that that 
literature, however excellent, is still the literature of the 
early rudimentary stage of revelation. It is incidental to 
the method of election that the favour of God to the 
elect is apt to be more laid to heart by them than their 
vocation, the privilege rather than the duty, the present 
separateness rather than the ultimate comprehension. This 
is the tendency of all privileged races, societies, and indi- 
viduals. It needs a high order of mind to resist the 
temptation, and to remember that the elect are chosen, not 
for their own sakes, but to serve others. There always 
were those in Israel who fully comprehended this truth, 
and constantly kept it in view, and it finds frequent and 
noble expression in the Hebrew Scriptures, especially in 
the later chapters of Isaiah, and in certain of the psalms, 
which breathe the genuine spirit of universalism. If a less 
heroic type of feeling here and there crops out, there is no 
cause for surprise. 

The question, therefore, is not how all members of the 
chosen race felt towards the heathen world, but what atti- 
tude js in harmony with the hypothesis of an election. 
Now, to arrive at a right answer, we must keep clearly 
before our minds what the hypothesis is. It is that the 
God of the whole earth, having in view the religious well- 
being of all mankind, adopted as His method the selection 
of a particular people to be the subject of special training, 
so as to become eventually a light to lighten the Gentiles. 
It is the universal Lord pursuing a universally beneficent 
end by a temporary religious particularism. No sooner 


PROPHETIC IDEA OF ISRAELS VOCATION, ETC. 200 


have we grasped this idea than we perceive that three 
inferences suggest themselves. 

The first is, that the universal aim involves a beneficent 
regard towards the outside nations on God’s part all along. 
For we cannot reasonably conceive of God as hostile to the 
heathen world up to a certain date, the beginning of the 
Christian era, and then suddenly changing His attitude 
from hostility to friendliness, as earthly monarchs change 
their tone towards each other for reasons of state policy. We 
must believe that He desired unchangeably the good of all 
everywhere, in all ages, and while reserving some great 
boon for a future age, took care that at no time should any 
people be entirely without some token of His goodwill, 
even in the sphere of religion. That means that even in 
the pre-Christian era God gave to the Gentiles at least the 
starlight of religious knowledge. We should therefore not 
be surprised to find that the pagan peoples had their pro- 
phets and seers, or think it necessary, in jealousy for the 
honour of Hebrew prophets and Christian apostles, to 
disparage the teaching of the wise men of the heathen 
world. On the contrary, our very belief in an election of 
one for the good of the many should lead us to look for 
traces of inspiration among pre-Christian races, seeing the 
total absence of these would cast doubt upon the reality of 
God’s gracious purpose to bless the many through the one. 
That a beneficent Being should cherish such a purpose, and 
for a time, even for a long time, not execute it fully, is 
conceivable; but one would certainly expect to find the 
objects of the purpose all along treated in a manner con- 
eruous to the purpose, and giving promise of ultimate 
fulfilment. 

Secondly, from the adoption of the method of election 
for realising the universal design, it may be inferred that 
the pagan religions, on examination, will show traces of 
marked inferiority, as compared with the religion of the 
elect people. If it turned out to be otherwise, we should 
justly doubt whether the election was either real or 


206 APOLOGETICS. 


requisite. The contrast ought to be apparent even at 
the outset, and it should become more marked with the 
progress of time. The method of election implies that 
religion cannot be left to look after itself, but needs special 
providential care; that without such care right thoughts of 
God, such as even pagans may attain to, are in danger of 
being lost, or remaining unfruitful. The plant of religion 
may at first be a good vine, but without special divine 
tending it must be prone to degenerate and to bring forth 
wild grapes. This is what theory leads us to expect, and 
it is what impartial study of ethnic religions tends to verify. 
It is characteristic of these religions, not so much to be 
without all true knowledge of God, as to be unable to 
retain that knowledge, and to make the most of it, and to 
go on from lower degrees of light to higher. Heathenism 
may be defined as religion that has made a good start, but is 
arrested in its free development and progress to perfection, 
and so has become retrograde. Having one source with the 
religion of the elect people, it does not, like it, flow on in 
ever-increasing volume, but loses itself in the sand.’ 
Thirdly, the election being designed not merely to bestow 
on the elect people the great boon of the true religion, but 
to qualify it for communicating that blessing to the world, 
we should expect to discover in universal history traces of a 
twofold line of preparation—on the one hand, of the chosen 
people for giving to the pagan nations the benefit of the 
true religion; on the other, of these nations for receiving 
the benefit. The double process, to serve its purpose, would 
need to be a very comprehensive one, including within its 
scope not merely religion, but all other departments of 
human affairs—philosophy, science, art, war, commerce, 
politics. The larger process of preparation among the 
Gentiles 1s quite as necessary to the realisation of the 
divine end in election as the smaller one among the elect 


' Ewald, Revelation: its Nature and Record, pp. 203, 204. This work is 
a translation of the first part of Ewald’s great work, Die Lehre der Bibel vom 
Gott. Vide list of books at the beginning of this chapter. 


PROPHETIC IDEA OF ISRAEL'S VOCATION, ETO. 207 


people. And its moral import is vast and varied. It 
means that God was never the God of the Jews only. It 
means that even by their very errors and failures God was 
bringing the Gentiles by a roundabout road to Christ. It 
means that there is no reason to take a despairing view of 
the spiritual state or future prospects of pagans on account 
of their comparative ignorance of the true God. That 
ignorance, as missionaries know, is often deep enough, but, 
however deep, it is a hasty judgment which pronounces 
it incompatible with salvation. This judgment at bottom 
rests on a mistaken view of the nature, purpose, and con- 
sequences of election, a relative, temporary, and economic 
preference being mistaken for an absolute, eternal, and 
intrinsic one. The elect race is not the exclusive sphere 
of salvation. The elect are themselves saviours, To save 
is their very vocation. And the God of the elect is caring 
for others in the very act of electing them. 

Some light even for pagans; heathenism nevertheless, 
on the whole, a failure ; its very failure a preparation for 
receiving the true religion—such are the inferences sug- 
gested by the method of election. If the facts verify these 
a priori inferences, the election will be at once shown to be 
a reality, and cleared of all liability to objection on the 
score of partiality. 

At the close of this chapter it may fitly be pointed out 
how clearly the whole course of Israel’s history shows that 
the supreme care of Providence was for the interests of the 
true religion, and not merely for the wellbeing of a pet 
people. If the supreme divine aim in calling Israel was 
to found a national theocratic kingdom, it was a failure ; 
if it was to give to the world the true religion, it suc- 
ceeded. God took little pains to preserve the unity and 
peace of the people He called His own. He suffered it to 
be broken up into tivo rival kingdoms. He permitted the 
larger kingdom to be blotted out of existence, and the 
smaller, a century afterwards, to be carried captive to 
Babylon, to return after a season to its own land no 


208 . APOLOGETICS. 


longer a nation, but a petty church. The church in 
turn resolved itself into rival sects, presenting a ridiculous 
caricature of the ideal kingdom of priests and holy nation. 
And how fared it with the true religion throughout these 
sad centuries? Amid national disasters the light of pro- 
phecy shone. The post -exilian Church produced the 
Psalter. And when at length the Jewish State was on 
the brink of final ruin, He appeared who was to be the 
Light of the world. The elect nation was replaced by the 
Elect Man. 


CHAPTER IV. 
MOSAISM. 


LITERATURE. — Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Band 
II.; Wellhausen, History of Israel; Stade, Geschichte des 
Volkes Israel; Kuenen, The Religion of Israel (translation) ; 
Renan, Histoire du peuple d Israel ; Schultz, Alttestamentliche 
Theologie ; Riehm, Alt. Theol.; Koenig, Die Hauwpt-Probleme 
der alt-Israelitischen Geschichte (translated by T. & T. Clark) ; 
Robertson, The Early Religion of Israel; Geerhardus Vos, 
The Mosare Origin of the Pentateuchal Codes, with an Intro- 
duction by Professor W. H. Green of Princeton. 


It was to be expected that the epoch of the Exodus should 
be associated with a new departure in revelation. Each 
of the three great stages in the evolution of Israel’s religion 
was connected with a providential crisis in Israel’s history ; 
Mosaism with the escape from Egyptian bondage, Pro- 
phetism with the rise of the great Eastern monarchies, 
and Judaism with the Babylonish exile. None of these 
crises was greater than the first. The Exodus brought to 
a close a sojourn centuries long in a land of peculiar cus- 

1 This is not stated dogmatically, but as a critical hypothesis which an 


apologist has no reason to fear. On the apologetic significance of the 
Psalter viewed as of post-exilic origin, vide chap. vii. of this book. 


MOSAISM. 209 


toms and most peculiar religion, well called “the religion 
of mystery”;* it meant deliverance from the oppressive 
yoke of Egyptian taskmasters long endured by the so- 
journers, and it would be remembered as a deliverance 
achieved by a series of remarkable events culminating in 
the way made through the sea that the bondslaves might 
for ever escape from their oppressors, who “sank as lead 
in the mighty waters,” and feel, when they stood on the 
further shore, that they were a free people. No combina- 
tion of circumstances can be conceived more fitted to 
produce an intense national self-consciousness, to awaken 
new religious thought, and to make a deep and indelible 
impression on character. The prophetic genius of a people 
that has had such an experience will have something to 
say of God and duty worth hearing, and not likely to be 
forgotten. It is therefore a violation of all historical 
probability to minimise the significance of Mosaism in 
deference to a naturalistic theory of evolution, which 
demands that the early stage in a religious development 
shall be sufficiently rudimentary to allow the whole sub- 
sequent course of things to present the appearance of 
steady onward progress. 

The grand outstanding, imperishable monument of Moses 
and his prophetic work is the DECALOGUE. We cannot, 
however, proceed to estimate the significance of that preg- 
nant summary of duty without reckoning with the views 
of some modern critics, who doubt or deny the Mosaic 
origin of the Ten Words, while admitting that they reflect 
the spirit of Mosaic religion. The best way to do this is 
to show the intrinsic credibility of the Decalogue as a 
Mosaic utterance: how naturally it fits into and arises 
out of the position of Israel as an emancipated people, 
more especially in the first table, which embodies the 
religious idea of the legislator. The key to the situation 
is to be found in the preface, which, whether written on 
stone or not, was certainly written on the hearts of the 

1 So Hegel in his Religions- Philosophie. 
) 


210 APOLOGETICS. 


emancipated people. “Iam Jehovah thy God, who have 
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of 
bondage.” These words not only set forth Jehovah’s 
claim, but are a clue to the idea of God entertained by 
the people of Israel or its representatives at the period of 
the Exodus. The name for Israel’s God is Jehovah, or 
more correctly, Jahveh, It is in all probability not an 
absolutely new name, but an old tribal name revived and 
pronounced with new emphasis, and charged with deeper 
significance. The origin and import of the name are 
obscure, and therefore no inference, certain and reliable, 
can be drawn from it as to the nature of the Being who 
bore it. A surer index is given in what Jehovah has done 
for Israel. He has brought her out of a land which has 
been for her a land of long-lasting, intolerable oppression. 
What educative virtue lay in that fact looked at on all sides! 

Consider, first, the natural effect of a state of bondage in 
producing a deep invincible dislike to all Egyptian ways 
in religion. Nothing less probable than that Israel will 
carry away from the land of bondage the religious customs 
and ideas of her oppressors; rather may it be expected 
that she will studiously avoid them in all directions. It 
may be assumed that, though living on the outskirts of the 
land in which they are strangers, the Beni-Israel had 
opportunities of becoming acquainted with local customs, 
Moses, at least, there is reason to believe, knew these 
intimately. And he knew only to abhor and shun; 
whence flow several important inferences. Thus: Egypt 
was a land of many gods It may therefore be expected 
that redeemed Israel will eschew polytheism, and that a 
fundamental article of her religious creed will be: Besides 
Jehovah there is no God—a real practical monotheism, if 
not a theoretical and speculative. This gives us the first 
commandment in the Decalogue: “Thou shalt have no 
other gods before me,” to be understood as enjoining not 
merely the worship of only one national God, but con- 
tempt of other gods. Again, Egypt was a land of images : 


MOSAISM. 211 


statues of the gods were to be seen everywhere; not with- 
out artistic merit, noble in outline, though lacking indi- 
viduality. How natural that the children of the Exodus 
should be proof against the fascinations of these divinities 
in stone, and that it should become an article in their 
creed that God is not to be worshipped by images. True, 
they are represented as worshipping a golden calf at the 
very foot of Sinai, which seems to show that their anti- 
Egyptian prejudices were not so strong as might have 
been expected. But it may be assumed that the indigna- 
tion of Moses at the sight was intensified by the thought 
that the act of idolatry was a relapse into the heathenish 
ways of Israel’s oppressors. From him, true patriot as he 
was, a prohibition against image-worship, such as we find 
in the second commandment, was to be looked for. Once 
more in the land of bondage there was in all probability 
no resting-day for the poor, overtasked slaves. All days of 
the week, if the week was known, were alike, a monotonous, 
unbroken continuity of toil. How welcome then to the 
ear of the emancipated the injunction of the Hebrew 
legislator, “ Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” 
whether we take it as creating a new institution, or as 
reviving an old Hebrew custom compulsorily neglected in 
the time of enslavement. 

The Mosaicity of the first table of the Decalogue thus 
appears to be intrinsically credible in the light of Israel’s 
past experience. The doubts of critics have been especially 
directed against the second commandment, whose Mosaic 
origin seems to them incompatible with the alleged pre- 
valence in after centuries of the use of images, even in 
connection with the worship of Jehovah. The calves of 
Jeroboam are pointed to in proof; for what, it is asked, 
was the religion established by the first king of the ten 
tribes but the worship of Jehovah under the image of an 
ox? And that this worship was not an innovation con- 
trary to previous custom, is argued from the manifest 
impolicy of outraging popular feeling, and from the absence 


212 APOLOGETICS, 


from the recerds of any indications that the prophet Elijah 
disapproved of the State-worship established at Dan and 
Bethel. The first note of condemnation of the association 
of Jehovah-worship with the image of an ox was uttered, 
we are told, by the prophets of the eighth century, and in 
_ their case the prohibition is connected with new views as 
to the nature of God. It denotes, in short, the transition 
from a physical to an ethical conception of deity. The ox 
of the old sanctuari' was doomed by the men who gave 
to the world ethical monotheism ; till then it had been a 
legitimate feature of J ehovah-worship. Two questions 
arise here: What are the facts, and how are they to be 
construed ? Assuming the facts to be as stated by the 
critics,—that at the various sanctuaries of Israel, from time 
immemorial, the ox had been associated with Jehovah- 
worship ; that Jeroboam, in setting up the calves at Dan 
and Bethel, was not introducing new gods, but only estab- 
lishing an old worship in new places; and that men of 
God like Elijah had no fault to find with him,—it becomes 
certainly less easy to believe in the Mosaic origin of the 
second commandment. One is tempted to think of it as a 
later insertion into an earlier form of the Decalogue in 
which it was wanting. But this serves no purpose, unless 
we get rid of other features of the Decalogue which show 
that the Jehovah of the Ten Words is no physical deity 
like the gods of Egypt, but an ethical being like the 
Jehovah believed in by the prophets of the eighth century. 

To prove this, we have only to consider more fully what 
is implied in the preface. «I am Jehovah, who have brought 
thee out of the land of Egypt. Consider the subject of 
redemption, and the means by which redemption is achieved. 
“Thee,” Israel, a poor oppressed race, what a glimpse this 
affords into the nature of Jehovah! He is the Friend of 
the weak against the strong, of the oppressed against the 
oppressor; He loves justice, hates wrong, and has pity on 
its helpless victims. Many centuries later, a Psalmist, 
thinking of God’s acts unto the children of Israel, sang of 


MOSAISM. 213 


Him as One who “executeth righteousness and judgment 
for all that are oppressed.”’ That this was Jehovah’s 
character would be as clear to Moses as it was to the 
Psalmist, and it is quite credible that it is to him we owe 
the description of Jehovah as “merciful and gracious, 
longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.” 2 

And by what means does Jehovah deliver His oppressed 
people? The object of His love is no mighty nation with 
powerful armies at its command. If He be merely a 
national God, He is as weak as the people He befriends. 
But He has other forces than armed men, horses, and 
chariots at His disposal. Seas, winds, hailstorms obey 
Him; pestilential disease is at His service; all living 
creatures, even frogs, flies, lice, co-operate to accomplish 
His will. So it appears from the records; so His ransomed 
people believe, and, believing this, what can they think 
but that Jehovah, their Redeemer, is not merely their 
tribal God, but God over all? Put these two things 
together,— Jehovah the just and merciful, and Jehovah the 
Lord of the world,—and what have we but ethical mono- 
theism ? 

We get the same result when we turn from the preface 
of the Decalogue to the Decalogue itself, and regard it as 
a whole. What at once arrests attention is the universal 
character of the code of morals it contains. There is 
nothing in the sum of duty local or national; all is human 
and valid for all mankind. That fact with reference to 
the contents of the second table, implies that ethical 
monotheism underlies the first. This inference is allowed by 
critics, and used as an argument against the Mosaic origin of 
the Decalogue. Thus among the reasons advanced by Well- 
hausen against its authenticity are these: “ The essentially 
and necessarily national character of the older phases of 
the religion of Jehovah completely disappears in the quite 
universal code of morals which is given in the Decalogue 
as the fundamental law of Israel; but the entire series of 


1 Ps, ciii, 6, 2 Ex. xxxiv, 6, 


214 APOLOGETICS, 


religious personalitiesthroughout the period of the Judges and 
the Kings—from Deborah, who praised Jael’s treacherous 
act of murder, to David, who treated his prisoners of war 
with the utmost cruelty—make it very difficult to believe 
that the religion of Israel was, from the outset, one of a 
‘specifically moral character. The true spirit-of the old 
religion may be gathered much more truly from Judg. v. 
than from Ex. xx.” Then again: “It is extremely doubt- 
ful whether the actual monotheism, which is undoubtedly 
presupposed in the universal moral precepts of the 
Decalogue, could have formed the foundation of a national 
religion.” The most valuable feature in these extracts is 
the admission they contain that the morality of the 
Pentateuch is universal, and that the universal morality 
implies monotheistic religion. The reasoning against the 
authenticity of the Ten Words is not very formidable. 
We are asked to doubt the lofty morality of Moses on 
account of the low morality of later personalities, The 
assumption is, that the moral growth of a nation must show 
a steady advance; there must be no lapsing from a higher 
level, no tide-like movement; the earlier stage must always 
he the ruder. As if the moral ideal of Christ did not 
tower above the actual morality of Christendom, as an 
Alpine range of mountains rises above the plains! Then 
we are told that a monotheism as old as Moses could not 
form the foundation of a national religion. Why not, if 
the national religion happened to have for its peculiarity 
among the religions of the world, monotheism, the belief 
that there is only one true God ? 

We may rest, then, in the conclusion that the Decalogue 
is the work of Moses. It is impossible to assign for its 
composition a more worthy time and author. The attempts 
to find for it a suitable place in later ages are not satis- 
factory. One suggests the reign of Manasseh, when 
Micah gave his memorable answer to the question, What 
doth God require of man—an answer so like the Decalogue, 

1 History of Israel, pp. 489, 440. 


MOSAISM. 215 


in its eloquent silence as to cultus, that one might be 
tempted to conjecture that to Micah rather than to Moses 
the world owes the Ten Words.1 But if the later prophet 
had done anything so great, there would surely have been 
a record of the fact in the book of his prophecies. Another 
suggestion is that the Decalogue originated at a time when 
prophetic protests first began to be raised against the 
traditional use of images in the worship of Jehovah? One 
can imagine the addition at such a crisis to an already 
existing compendium of duty, of a new commandment 
directed against the use of images; but it is hardly likely 
that the first sketch of the code would have so late an 
origin. As little can we believe that so important a 
phenomenon would make its appearance in the world with 
so little noise. There was a finding of the book when the 
Deuteronomic code came into existence. The services of 
Ezra the scribe, in reducing to written form “the law of 
Moses,” are duly chronicled. And the grandest part of 
that law, the very essence and kernel of Israel’s religion, 
steals into existence without a father and without a 
date! 

The original form of the Decalogue can only be con- 
jectured. The two versions of it given in Ex. xx. and 
Deut. v. vary in several particulars, and the probability is 
that both are expansions of a more primitive version written 
in the lapidary style suitable to inscriptions on stone. 
Ewald reproduces the original thus :— _ 


I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the land 
of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 


1 Wellhausen, History of Israel, p. 486. ‘‘ Perhaps to this period the 
Decalogue also, which is so eloquently silent in regard to cultus, is to be 
assigned.” The period is that to which Micah vi. 1-vii. 6 belongs, which 
Wellhausen assigns to Manasseh’s time. He does not suggest that the 
author of this passage composed the Decalogue, but one reading this passage 
naturally asks, Might not the prophetic oracle and the Decalogue proceed 
from the same hand ? 

4 Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 199, 


216 APOLOGETICS, 


ifs 


. Thou shalt have no other god before me. 

. Thou shalt not make unto thee any image (Steinbild). 

. Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in 
vain. 

. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it. 

- Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother. 


IL 


Ou whore 


. Thou shalt not kill. 

. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

. Thou shalt not steal. 

. Thou shalt bear no false witness against thy neighbour. 
. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house. 


Ot ©) DS = 


In what characters was the Decalogue written? The 
Hebrew alphabet, as we know it, was not then in existence, 
but that did not make writing for Hebrews impossible. 
Moses was doubtless acquainted with the hieroglyphic 
symbols of Egypt, one of the most characteristic features 
of the religion of mystery. There was also at his command 
the cuneiform syllabary of Babylon, which recent dis- 
coveries at Tel-el-Amarna show to have been in common 
use at the period.” It is even possible that he employed 
an alphabet current in the Minzan kingdom long anterior 
to the discovery of the Pheenician alphabet, and supposed 
by some scholars to be the source of the latter. 

The foregoing discussion of the authenticity of the 
Decalogue has anticipated much of what might be said in 


1Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Band Il. p. 231. Vatke in his 
Einleitung, 1886, gives a scheme which varies from Ewald’s in two par- 
ticulars. He turns the preface into a commandment=I am Jehovah thy 
God, and omits the command against images. Vide p. 388. 

? Clay tablets have been found there with inscriptions in cuneiform 
characters of date 1500 B.c., probably earlier than the Exodus. From these 
inscriptions it is inferred that at that period there was free literary inter- 
course between Egypt, Palestine, and Babylon, in the Babylonian language 
and syllabary. 

* The Minzan empire is one of the most recent discoveries of Oriental 
archeology. It occupied the Arabian peninsula at a very ancient date, 
Archzologists describe the Mineans as a literary people. -“4h an alphabetic 


MOSAISM. 217 


a positive statement concerning its import. It proclaims, 
we have seen, a spiritual God, who loves justice and mercy 
and rules over all, and it teaches a pure universal morality 
implying a monotheistic religious basis. But there are one 
or two other features which must be pointed out in order 
to make our estimate of its significance complete. 

Foremost among these is the exclusion from the funda- 
mental law of Israel—basis of the covenant between her 
and God—of everything of a merely ritual character, such 
as circumcision. In this respect there is a striking contrast 
between the religion of Israel as formulated by Moses, and 
the religion of Egypt as reflected in the ritual of the dead. 
In the trial of the soul after death therein described there 
is a grotesque mixture of merely ritual with moral offences, 
The tried one protests that he has not been guilty of 
uncleanness, perjury, injustice, inhumanity; and also that 
he has not neglected religious ceremonies, extinguished the 
perpetual lamp, driven off the sacred cattle, netted sacred 
birds, or robbed the gods of their offered haunches.1 The 
fancied protest of the dead reveals the thoughts of the 
living, and shows that the ancient Egyptians failed to 
realise the vast gulf which divides moral duties from 
technical breaches of religious ceremonial. The Decalogue 
is a proof that Israel, or at least Moses, had mastered 
the grand distinction. Renan has remarked that the 
Decalogue is very analogous to the negative confession of 
the dead in the Egyptian religion.2 What ought to strike 
one is not the resemblance, but the contrast. It is one of 
the points at which we are forced to recognise the wide 
difference between the religion of nature and the religion 
of revelation. That God had not left Himself without a 


system of writing whence the Phenician was derived. If this be verified, 
we shal] have to regard Arabia as the primitive home of our modern 
alphabets. Vide article by Professor Sayce in Contemporary Review, 
1st December 1889. 

1 The Funereal Ritual, translated by Dr. Birch, vol. v. of Bunsen’s 
Egypt's Place in Universal History, pp. 252, 258. 

2 Histoire du Peuple d’Israel, p. 122, vol. i, of the English translation. 


218 APOLOGETICS, 


witness in the Egyptian conscience, the trial of the dead 
clearly shows. But that the light within was not unmixed 
with darkness, the confusion of the moral and the ritual 
in the same scene not less clearly evinces. In the 
Decalogue the supremacy of the moral shines with the 
brightness of the day. The fact of the contrast is patent, 
explain it as we may.! 

_ The purely ethical character of the Decalogue has an 
important bearing on the question as to the relation of 
Moses to the ritual legislation recorded in the Pentateuch. 
In the previous paragraph we were concerned with a con- 
trast between the religion of Israel and that of Egypt. 
What now invites our attention is a contrast between two 
different phases of the same religion: Mosaism and 
Judaism. In whatever relation Moses stood to the 
Levitical law, it is evident, the Decalogue being witness, 
that in his view it was of quite secondary importance. 
The motto of Mosaism was, to obey—moral fidelity—is 
better than sacrifice, With Judaism, what we may call 
neo-Mosaism, it was otherwise. The secondary with it 
became primary—or at least co-ordinate. The ritual took 
its place beside the moral. Not, indeed, that it became an 
end in itself. The leading aim of Ezra was the same as 
that of Moses, to make Israel faithful to her God. Ritual 
was intended to be a hedge to the true religion, to the 
worship of Jehovah, protecting it against the reinvasion of 
pagan idolatries. But the prominence given to it with this 


Critics discover in Ex, xxxiy, 14-26 another Decalogue, also the basis 
of a covenant, and try to reconstruct it in its original form. Thus Stade 
(Geschichte des Volkes Israel, p. 510) offers the following table :—1. Thou 
shalt worship no other god; 2. Thou shalt make no molten image; 3. Thou 
shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread; 4. All the first-born are mine ; 
5. Thou shalt keep the Sabbath ; 6. Thou shalt keep the feast of Weeks and 
Ingathering ; 7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of sacrifice with leavened 
bread ; 8. Of the Passover offering shall nothing remain till the morning ; 
9. Bring firstlings of fruit to the house of Jehovah; 10. Seethe not a kid 
in the milk of his mother. A curious mixture! Wide Driver’s Introduction, 
p. 37, where Wellhausen’s reconstruction is given. The section containing 
this ‘‘ Decalogue” belongs to the Jehovistic document, . 


MOSAISM, 219 


view involved the risk of its becoming more important 
than the thing it guarded—a risk which the subsequent 
career of scribism shows to have been far from imaginary. 
In assigning the sovereign place to the ethical, Moses 
showed himself to be well entitled to the designation of 
prophet conferred upon him by Hosea.1_ He was in spirit 
the forerunner of the prophets of the eighth century B.c., 
whose watchword was, not ritual, but righteousness. In 
this sense we may understand the statement of Jeremiah: 
“I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in 
the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, 
concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: but this thing 
commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be 
your God, and ye shall be my people.”’2 Some take this 
to mean that the whole Levitical law was post-Mosaic, 
that no such directions regarding sacrifices and kindred 
topics as are recorded in the middle books of the Pen- 
tateuch emanated from Moses. This may be too wide an 
inference, and possibly the prophet’s assertion may be only 
a strong way of saying that ritual had a very subordinate 
place in the Mosaic legislation, that the thing insisted on 
was Obedience, in the sense of heart loyalty to Jehovah 
and fidelity in all relative duties—in other words, compliance 
with the behests of the Decalogue. So much, however, it 
must mean if it is not to be robbed of all point and force. 
Whether, even when so modified, the statement of Jeremiah 
be compatible with Moses having anything like as much 
to do with the ritualistic Torah as is implied in the 
Pentateuchal narrative, is a question not to be lightly put 
aside. It does seem as if, in order to make the great 
truth, Obedience before sacrifice, valid, to impress upon a 
rude, people a lesson which even highly civilised peoples 
are slow to learn,—that morality is of more worth than 


1 Hos. xii. 18: ‘‘By a prophet Jehovah brought Israel out of Egypt.” 
Moses is not named, but just on that account the designation of him as a 
prophet gains in emphasis, 

2 Jer. vii, 22, 23, 


220 APOLOGETICS, 


formal compliance with religious rules,—it would be 
necessary for a man occupying the position of Moses to 
keep himself aloof from matters of ritual as if they were 
not in his line, to be almost ostentatiously careless about 
them, to leave them to be attended to by other and smaller 
men, priests by profession. One can conceive how it 
might not be very difficult to pursue such a policy. 
Priestly ritual, at whatever period reduced to writing, was 
doubtless in the main of great antiquity. Probably the 
rules of worship were to a large extent old customs going 
back into the dim centuries before Moses. In that case 
there would be no need for new legislation. It would be 
enough to let well alone, to endorse or countenance exist- 
ing usage. 

This we can conceive Moses doing either cumulatively 
or in detail, without prejudice to his grand function of 
prophetic legislator within the sphere of moral law. We 
can view the principles common to the various law-books, 
as having the stamp of Mosaic sanction, without assigning 
to them a place in the proper work of Moses, or raising 
them to the dignity of being an integral part of Mosaism. 
We may even go the length of discovering in the Decalogue 
itself a tacit recognition of ritual. If anywhere, that must 
be found in the Fourth Commandment, “ Remember the 
Sabbath day.” Without doubt, the first thing in the legis- 
lator’s intention, in connection with the hallowing of that 
day, is rest. That appears plainly in both the versions of 
the Decalogue. God would have Israelites rest from toil 
on the seventh day, and above all see to it that all depend- 
ent on them had full enjoyment of their rest, reminding 
them of the time of Egyptian bondage when no resting- 
day came round, that they might be more considerately 
humane. It is this kindly provision for the need of the 


1 Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 461, says: *‘ We will not err if 
we hold the material out of which the fabric of the ceremonial law is 
formed—most of the individual customs and usages—as of great antiquity, 
much older than the Old Testament religion.” 


MOSAISM. 221 


labouring million that raises the Fourth Commandment to 
the dignity of a moral law. But while rest is the thing 
chiefly in view, worship need not be thought of as out of 
sight. For right-minded Israelites resting-days will be 
worshipping-days, when they will appear before the Lord 
with thankful hearts, rejoicing in His goodness and giving 
expression to their gladness by such acts as custom pre- 
scribes. And the “Remember” with which the Sabbath 
law begins, may be conceived of as covering the whole 
sphere of worship with all its relative usages. In that 
case it would follow that Moses recognised the indispens- 
ableness of worship institutions for the wellbeing of the 
state; and, on the other hand, the slight reserved manner 
in which the recognition is made is significant as to the 
subordinate relation in which Mosaism places acts of wor- 
ship to the discharge of moral duty.’ 

From the foregoing observations it will appear that the 
question as to the relation of Moses to ritual is not one 
which concerns the existence of ritual in the time of Moses, 
but only the place to be assigned to it in the Mosaic 
system. So viewed, it may be discussed with calmness. 
The hypothesis that the Deuteronomic and priestly codes 
are post-Mosaic, does not necessarily mean that their true 
authors invented their contents and imputed them to Moses, 
It only means that religious customs, mostly ancient, though 
in some particulars new, were then reduced to written form 
and ascribed to Moses not so much as author, but rather 
as authority.’ But the question, though thus restricted in 
scope, is one of great importance for the right understand- 
ing of the place of Moses in the history of Israel’s religion, 
We must on no account conceive of that great man as a 


1 Riehm, Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 74. 

*Riehm, Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 81, says: ‘*The Mosaic tradi- 
tions in reference to cultus were preserved by the priests at Shiloh. Written 
codes prepared by the priests helped to make these traditions prevail. 
These codes they ascribed to Moses, but only their spirit and main features 
are Mosaic ; special features were added by the priests, partly in their own 
interest, and many of them remained mere postulates.” 


222 APOLOGETICS. 


person of priestly spirit, or even as belonging to the genus 
scribe, whereof Ezra is the most respectable representative. 
We must ever think of him as in vocation and spirit the 
Prophet. And to vindicate for him that character we must 
strenuously insist that the Decalogue, not the ritual law, is 
his characteristic contribution.’ Moses did for his country- 
men two things of quite incomparable value. First, he 
pointed the lesson of the Exodus, and all that led up to 
it, concerning God. It is not affirmed that he introduced 
a theoretically new idea of God, but only that prophet-like 
he improved the occasion, and took out of the events all the 
instruction they were fitted +o convey concerning the nature 
and character of God. God’s self-revelation recorded in 
Scripture is not doctrinaire, consisting in abstract theo- 
logical propositions. God revealed Himself in the Egyptian 
drama of Israel’s history, and Moses understood the true 
import of what had happened, and conveyed it to his 
people. Next, he taught his people the supreme value of 
the great fundamental laws of conduct. He did not dis- 
cover these laws, he did not need to discover them, or to 
have them for the first time revealed to him on Sinai: 
they were written on the hearts of all men, Egyptian and 
Israelite alike. What he learnt for himself and taught 
Israel, was the sovereign importance of these laws. By 
writing them on stone tablets by themselves he said: these 

1Vatke (Die Religion des A. T., p. 218) argues against the Mosaic 
origin of the cultus on the ground that the stiff mechanism of form is never 
the immediate, that is, cannot belong to the first stage of a religious develop- 
ment. This is a philosophic reason which may have its truth. But the 
ground on which [I lay stress is the ethical or prophetic character of the 
work of Moses. Just because I agree with those who (like Professor Robert- 
son in his Baird Lectures) argue against the naturalistic school for the ethical 
character of the Mosaic idea of God, I find it difficult to believe that Moses 
was the author of the elaborate system of ritual in the middle books of the 
Pentateuch. Modern criticism helps us here by enabling us to form a 
thoroughly consistent conception of the character of Moses as a prophet, and 
to assign to his work as an originator a simplicity analogous to the simplicity 
of Christ. Professor Robertson’s reasoning from the ethicalism of the pro- 


phets to the ethicalism of Moses seems to me conclusive. When he applies 
his argument to ritual I cannot follow him, 


MOSAISM. 223 


are the things by which nations live and die. Do these 
and it shall go well with thee, neglect them and thou shalt 
perish, Through these two supreme services: the lesson 
on God embodied in the first table of the Decalogue, and 
the lesson on duty embodied in the second, Moses laid the 
foundations of Israel’s national life deep and strong. In 
proportion as Israel shared the convictions of her great 
hero, she had the consciousness of being a nation; in 
proportion as she remained faithful to him would her 
national existence be prolonged and her prosperity be 
promoted.* 

Enough has been said to place before the eye in general 
outline the nature and value of Mosaism. For this purpose 
use has been made of two contrasts: one between the 
Decalogue and the Egyptian ritual of the dead, and another 
between Moses and Ezra in relation to Leviticalism. To 
make the picture complete, it may be well to advert briefly 
to a third contrast, that between the Jehovah of the Deca- 
logue and the Baal of pagan Semitic religions, Jehovah 
has no other gods beside Him or before His face, neither 
male deities nor female. The Baal divinities of pagan 
Semitic peoples, Babylonians, Phcenicians, Canaanites, have 
all their female companions. Sexuality is a radical char- 
acteristic of deity as conceived by these peoples. That 
means sensuality introduced into religion, sexual prostitu- 
tion erected into an act of worship, whereby Semitic 
paganism becomes stamped with an exceptional vileness. 
What a contrast is here in the idea of God, and what 


1 After quoting Kuenen’s view that the great merit of Moses was that he 
placed the service of Jehovah on a moral footing, Canon Cheyne, in a review of 
Canon Driver’s ‘‘Introduction” in the Expositor of February 1892, remarks : 
“This surely ought to satisfy the needs of essential orthodoxy. For what 
conservatives want, or ought to want, is not so much to prove the veracity 
of Israelitish priests, when they ascribed certain ordinances to Moses, as to 
show that Moses had high intuitions of God and of morality. In a word, 
they want, or they ought to want, to contradict the view that the religion of 
Israel, at any rate between Moses and Amos, in no essential respect differed 
from that of Moab, Ammon, and Edom, Israel’s nearest kiusfolk and 
neighbours,” 


224 APOLOGETICS. 


diverse fruit it must bear in social life, on one side severe 
purity, on the other revolting, unmentionable vice! Whence 
this vast difference between Israel and peoples to which she 
is close of kin in blood and language? It is a fact con- 
firmatory of the hypothesis of election, tending to show that 
the election of a people to be the recipient and vehicle of 
the true religion, was at once very necessary and very 
real, 

One thing is conspicuous by its absence in Mosaism: all 
reference to the state after death. The fact has often been 
commented on and explanations of it have been attempted. 
One thing is certain, the omission cannot be due to the 
idea of a life beyond the grave not having been present to 
the mind. No one could have lived in Egypt even for a 
short time without hearing of the underworld with its 
states of bliss and woe, and becoming familiar with the arts 
of embalming by which the Egyptians, in a futile, childish 
battle with corruption, sought to endow even the body with 
immortality, and to put the soul of the deceased in the 
same position as if death had not taken place. Herodotus 
gives to the Egyptians the credit of being the first to teach 
the doctrine that the soul is immortal,’ and the mummies 
found in the most ancient monuments show that the belief 
was older than the time of Moses. Why, then, had the 
Hebrew legislator nothing to say on the subject? Pro- 
bably just because the Egyptians had so much. He deemed 
it better to have no doctrine of a hereafter at all than such a 
doctrine as prevailed in the land of bondage. That gloomy 
underworld presided over by a dead divinity, that for- 
bidding judgment scene in the hall of the two truths, that 
dismal dogma of the transmigration of souls, that ghastly 
practice of embalming—these were all things it were 
better to get banished from the mind. The religion of 
Egypt has been appropriately called the religion of death. 
From such a religion the healthy Hebrew nature would 
instinctively recoil. Hence the expressive silence as to 


1 Historia, ii. 123, 


MOSAISM. 22.5 


the state beyond in the religion of Moses, which may with 
equal propriety be called the religion of life. Instead of 
a dead divinity judge of men after dissolution, it places a 
living divinity, who has done great things for Israel in grace 
and mercy, in the forefront of the law which seeks to 
regulate life on earth. Instead of saying, Live well, for 
remember, Osiris will judge you, it says rather. Live well, 
for the Lord thy God brought thee out of the land of 
Egypt. Instead of promising a life of bliss in the next 
world, which is but a shadow of the life on earth, it pro- 
mises rather as the reward of well-doing national prosperity 
in the present world. Fear God, said Moses in effect to 
Israel, “fear God, and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the 
land, and thou shalt be fed; and for the rest leave yourself 
in God’s hands. When you die, commit your soul to Him 
who gave it, and leave your body not to the embalmers, but 
to friends to bury it in the dust.” 

It has been suggested that the Exodus was the finale of 
a oes religious war between the Hebrews and the Egyp- 
tians.’ It may appear a hazardous conjecture, though the 
references in the Pentateuch to the gods of Eeypt ag 
involved in the judgments executed on the people, seem to 
offer some foundation for it.2 But the two religions were 
certainly very antagonistic in spirit, and when peoples 
cherishing so entirely diverse ideas about God and man, 
and life and death, live together in the same land, rupture 
must come sooner or later. Each must go its own way, 
and the two ways lead in very different directions. The 
way of Israel leads to light and imperishable blessing for 
the world; the way of Egypt leads to decay and death 
everlasting. 


1 Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Band II. p. 80, 
3 Ex. xv. 11; Num. iii. 4. 


226 APOLOGETICS. 


CHAPTER V.. 
PROPHETISM. 


LITERATURE.—Ewald, Die Propheten des Alten Bundes ; 
Tholuck, Die Propheten und thre Weissagungen; Kuenen, 
Prophets and Prophecy in Israel; Koenig, der Offenbarungs- 
beariff des Alten Testaments ; Robertson Smith, Zhe Prophets 
of Israel; Reuss, La Bible (Les Prophetes); Duhm, Die 
Theologie der Propheten; Duff, Old Testament Theology ; 
Darmesteter, Les Prophetes d’Israel (a series of reviews, the 
first of chief importance), 1892; Renan, Histoire du Peuple 
d@ Israel, vol. iii. 


Mosaism, as a distinct phase of Israel’s religious history, 
may be regarded as extending from the Exodus to the 
eighth century B.c., covering a period of some 600 years. 
During that long stretch of time Mosaic ideas worked like 
a ferment among the chosen people, ever tending to make 
them in thought and conduct a people answering to the 
divine purpose in calling them. It is needless to say that 
throughout these centuries, and especially those immediately 
following the conquest of Canaan, the Mosaic programme 
—lIsrael a holy nation in covenant with Jehovah, the one 
true righteous God—remained to a large extent an un- 
realised ideal. The realisation, even approximately, of lofty 
ideals is never the work of a day. It was to be expected 
that the height of inspiration reached by a prophetic mind, 
at_a great crisis like the Exodus, would not be sustained. 
Lapse to a lower moral and religious level was inevitable. 
It would not surprise us to find the “ holy nation” of God’s 
purpose scarce conscious of being a nation, far from holiness, 
and very unmindful of the Jehovah who brought their 
fathers out of the land of Egypt. Such were the facts 
regarding Israel during the period of the “Judges.” It 
was an obscure time of rude beginnings, of which the book 
of Judges gives a graphic and, in general outline if not in 
all details, true life-like picture. It is an interesting and 


PROPHETISM. 227 


hopeful story, in spite of its barbarisms, political, moral, 
and religious; for it is the story not of a corrupt effete 
nation drawing nigh to its end, but of a young people in 
the act of forming itself into a nation; abounding in the 
virtues and also in the faults of youth; too independent to 
tolerate a central authority ; ever ready to fight with the 
old occupants of Canaan, yet only too accessible to the 
fascinations of their evil religious customs; capable of 
great moral excesses, yet not without a certain robustness 
of conscience that can be roused into indignation and swift 
vengeance by a crime which outrages natural feeling. 

At the close of this dark age of beginnings appeared a 
faithful representative of Mosaism, under whose influence 
and guidance the fortunes of the chosen people took a 
new turn. Samuel did two things for Israel. He recalled 
her to her allegiance to Jehovah, and he made her feel as 
she had never done before that she was one people. The 
sense of national unity took practical shape in the desire 
for a king, and for a hundred years the twelve tribes 
enjoyed the happy, proud consciousness of forming a strong 
united kingdom under the reigns of Saul, David, and 
Solomon. But experience proved that it was as difficult 
to find a perfectly just wise king ruling in the fear of God 
and for the general good, as to be a holy nation. Bonds 
recently cemented are easily broken, and unjust partial 
government provokes rebellion. So it came to pass that 
national unity was soon disrupted, and two rival kingdoms 
took the place of one. The true religion, or indeed anything 
good, was not likely to flourish under such circumstances. 
Of the years which followed the rupture we know little, 
and what is recorded is far from satisfactory. The first 
bright event relieving the gloom of an evil time is the 
appearance of the heroic prophetic figure of Elijah the 
Tishbite, in the reign of Ahab, King of Israel. His task 
was to affirm with tremendous emphasis the truth: Jehovah 
the one God in Israel, against the king, who, having married 
a Tyrian princess, thought good to associate with Jehovah, 


228 APOLOGETICS, 


“as an object of worship, the Tyrian divinity Baal. To 
king and people this act might seem nothing more than a 
courteous compliance with custom towards the gods of a 
friendly nation, which could not well be avoided if Israel 
was not to be entirely isolated. But Elijah cared nothing 
for state courtesies and expediencies. He was jealous for 
Jehovah’s honour, and believed and taught that Jehovah 
was a jealous God who would brook no rival, so doing his 
best to bring his countrymen back to the Mosaic ideal: 
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” 

Elijah’s zeal would have been much ado about nothing 
if the Jehovah he championed had been a mere physical 
deity like the gods of the pagan Semites. It would then 
have been a question between him and Ahab whether one 
or two divinities of the same sort were to be worshipped 
in the land. Elijah might in that case have been the 
better patriot, more faithful than Ahab to the national 
spirit and traditions, but no moral interest would have 
been involved in the quarrel. The question between the 
prophet and the king was of vital moment only if Jehovah, 
as the former conceived Him, was a different kind of god 
from Baal; not a mere national god, but a God with a 
definite moral character, to whom righteousness was the 
supreme interest. If such was the God Elijah believed in, 
he did well to resist the introduction of other deities in 
his jealousy for Jehovah. To place Baal beside Jehovah 
was to rob Jehovah of His distinctive character, and to 
degrade Him to the level of a merely national deity. 
Jealousy is a just feeling in the worshippers of an ethical 
god, as it is an appropriate attribute of the god they 
worship. To say of God that He is jealous is to affirm 
that moral distinctions are real for Him, and to impute 
jealousy to His worshippers is to say in effect that the 
ethical interest in religion is the thing of supreme concern 
to them. So we must understand the zeal of Elijah. It 
was not the zeal of a patriot merely; it was the zeal of a 
man who cared above all things for justice and purity and 


PROPHETISM. 229 


all the moral interests covered by the Decalogue. The 
key to his character and public conduct may be found in 
his denunciation of the wickedness of Ahab in taking 
forcible possession of Naboth’s vineyard. “There we see 
what all along he has been aiming at in his uncompromis- 
ing opposition to Baal. He will have Israel worship alone 
that God who loves right and hates ill, and suffers no 
iniquity to go unpunished, even though it be perpetrated 
by powerful rulers against defenceless subjects. 

Can it be, as critics allege, that this man tolerated 
the worship of Jehovah by images? If he did, it must 
have been because the supposed existing practice in that 
respect did not appear to him as compromising the moral 
character of Jehovah. The question is not of vital im- 
portance, unless it be assumed that the worship of Jehovah 
under the form of an ox necessarily implies that Jehovah 
was conceived of as a physical divinity like Baal. We 
are not, however, shut up to this position. The ox might 
be simply a symbol like the cherubim, and symbolism in 
religion, whatever its dangers, is not incompatible with the 
spirituality of the object of worship. But take the case at 
its worst. Grant that, as a matter of fact, the ox was to 
be seen in the days of Elijah in the provincial sanctuaries 
devoted to the worship of Jehovah, and that its presence 
there was contrary to the spirit of Mosaism as expressed 
in the Decalogue, and not without peril to the pure wor- 
ship of Israel’s God, and that Elijah looked on and said 
nothing. What then? Does it follow that he altogether 
approved? No, but only that his attention was absorbed 
by a far greater evil. First get rid of Baal, the foul 
divinity of Tyre, then there may be time to attend to the 
minor abuse of images in the sanctuaries of Jehovah. 

-Elijah’s protest produced important immediate results, but 


? Professor Robertson, advocating this view of Elijah’s conduct, and com- 
paring his action with that of the later prophets who waged war with images, 
illustrates the situation by a historic parallel, ‘‘The two crises are very 
much like those which Europe passed through in its religious history—first 
the struggle as to whether the Crescent or the Cross should be the recognised 


230 APOLOGETICS. 


it wrought no permanent deliverance. The kings and people 
of Israel went on in their evil way, so that after the lapse 
of a century it was becoming evident to observing minds 
that the nation was ripening for judgment just when 
Providence was preparing in the East the instrument of 
her punishment. The situation offered a splendid oppor- 
tunity for the reaffirmation of the principles of Mosaism, 
with fresh inspiration, and with new developments adapted 
to the novel circumstances. Such was the service rendered 
by the prophets of the eighth century B.c. 

We must be careful neither to overestimate nor to 
underestimate the achievement of these remarkable men, 
with whose general religious ideas we have already made 
ourselves acquainted. On the one hand, it is an exaggera- 
tion to say that the prophets converted Jehovah from a 
physical into an ethical deity. It is, of course, a postulate 
of naturalism that the objects of worship must be first 
physical and only at a later stage in the evolution of 
religion become ethical personalities, and it must be ad- 
mitted that there is much in the history of religion to 
justify the assumption. In the case of Greece, eg., the 
gods worshipped at Dodona and Olympus in the ancient 
Pelasgic period—Zeus, Apollo, and Pallas—were simply 
objects of nature personified. By the time of Homer these 
and other physical divinities of the primitive time had 
become humanised and more or less transformed into 
august beings endowed with moral characteristics. Zeus, 
originally the blue heaven, had become the father of gods 
and men, the ruler over all, the god of moral order. It is 
not improbable that the nomadic ancestors of Israel in 
prehistoric times were, like the Aryan races, nature-wor- 
shippers, and that spiritual conceptions of godhead were a 
later acquisition. What is contended for is that the trans- 


symbol of superiority, and then the Reformation of religion from its own 
abuses in the sixteenth century.”—Zarly Religion of Israel, pp. 226, 227. 
Duhm points out that Hosea was the first to condemn worship of J ehovah by 
images. Vide Die Theologie der Propheten, p. 101, 


PROPHETISM. 531 


formation was not reserved for the eighth century B.c. It 
came much earlier, at least as early as the time of Moses. 
The ideality of God, that He is spirit, that He possesses a 
definite moral character, was an article in the Mosaic creed, 
and this faith, more or less clearly apprehended, formed an 
element in the religious consciousness of the best minds in 
Israel from the days of Moses onwards} though doubtless it 
had to maintain an incessant struggle for recognition against 
lower and cruder views. In proclaiming an ethically- 
conceived Jehovah, therefore, the great prophets were not 
discoverers of an absolutely new truth: they were only 
reaffirmers with new emphasis of the hereditary faith of 
Israel, the beneficent source of all that was good in her 
history since the time of the Exodus. 

“ Reaffirmers,” but certainly with new emphasis, and 
with an intensity of conviction and a width of comprehen- 
sion which made the old faith practically a new revelation. 
The prophets of the eighth century are not to be conceived 
of as mere echoes or tame, servile interpreters of Moses. 
They were the recipients of fresh inspiration, and delivered 
their message, whether in substance new or old, as if the 
truth they announced had never been heard of before. 
Their thoughts were always subjectively original, even 
when objectively familiar. Compared with Mosaism their 
doctrine was, to a considerable extent, even objectively 
distinctive. The difference corresponds to diversity of 
situation. Moses, standing at the beginning of Israel’s 
history, was naturally concerned about making his people 
a nation with Jehovah for their own covenant God. Hence 
he laid emphasis, not on Jehovah’s universal relations to 
the world, but rather on His special relation to the chosen 
race. Not “Jehovah who chose you is the God of all,” 
but “the God of all, Jehovah, chose you,” was his message 
to the men whom he brought out of the land of bondage. 


1 Vatke maintains that the ideality of God, at least in abstract or ger- 
minal form, was an element nf Mosaism. Vide Die Religion des Alten 
Testaments, p. 230. 


232 APOLOGETICS, 


That Jehovah was the God over all was shown by the 
marvellous events through which the redemption of Israel 
was accomplished; yet these events only tended to give 
prominence to the national aspect of Jehovah’s character. 
Through them He punished the Egyptians for wrongs 
inflicted on His oppressed people. The prophets, on the 
other hand, in their situation, quite as naturally gave 
prominence to the universal aspect. The whole known 
world was astir with movements of which Israel was the 
centre. In the political life of the nations they saw one 
Mind and Will at work, and the thought was borne in 
upon them with irresistible force, “Jehovah is God over 
all.” Then what did the events that were happening or 
impending mean? Not Jehovah judging the nations for 
Israel’s sake, but Jehovah using the nations to punish 
Israel for her sins. On this side also the universal aspect 
rather than the special comes to the front. 

Thus far of the contrast between Mosaism and Prophet- 
ism in reference to the idea of God. There is also a 
contrast between them in their respective relations to 
ethical interests. Moses in his position naturally became 
a prophetic legislator. It was his task to codify duty for 
the guidance of an infant nation. The prophets, coming on 
the scene far down in the history of the same people, had 
to perform the part of moral critics. While Moses set 
before the Israel of the Exodus the moral ideal, the 
prophets told the Israel of six centuries later how far 
short she came of realising the ideal. The prophetic era 
was not the time for framing a Decalogue: that is the 
proper work of the initial epoch; it was rather the time 
for testing conduct by a recognised moral standard, a 
function which the prophets performed with an unswerving 
fidelity and a burning moral enthusiasm that show how 
brightly the moral ideal shone before their spiritual 
eye. 

It is to this latter aspect of the prophetic vocation that 
we are now more particularly to direct our attention. We 


PROPHETISM. 233 


are to make ourselves acquainted with the characteristics 
of the prophets viewed as moral critics of their time. 

1. The first grand fundamental feature to be noted in 
this connection is the passion for righteousness with which 
all the prophets were consumed as if by a divine fire 
burning in their hearts. In most men the moral sense is 
so feeble that it is difficult for them to understand or 
sympathise with this feature of the prophetic character. 
Hence prophetic men, since the world began, have never 
been understood or appreciated in their own time. They 
have been deemed fools, madmen, revolutionists, impious 
miscreants; anything but what they were: the wisest, the 
noblest, the truest in their generation. Against such there 
has ever been a law of convention and moral mediocrity, 
which condemns the unusually good with not less severity 
and confidence than the unusually evil. Happily the 
world slowly wakens up to the fact that a few unusually 
good, wise, and earnest men now and then appear, and 
recognises them as such after they are dead, though it 
cannot endure thern when living. To this “goodly fellow- 
ship” belonged the Hebrew prophets; and that they were 
of this type and temper is the first fact to be laid to heart 
concerning them if we would understand their character, 
vocation, and life-work. There have been men of the same 
type and temper in other lands, in all ages; such men 
exist in the world still; it would be a wretched world 
without them, for they are the very salt of the earth. But 
the Hebrew prophets are the first and best of their kind: 
men of absolutely unparalleled moral earnestness, 

2. To this subjective disposition the prophets united a 
congruous faith in an objective moral order, in a power 
not themselves making for righteousness, in a living God 
who was at least as earnest as themselves in loving right 
and hating wrong, and wielding His power for the advance- 
ment of the one and the repression of the other. This 
morally earnest God, they believed, exercised a just benign 
tule over all peoples dwelling on the face of the earth, 


234 APOLOGETICS, 


Hence they did not, as moral critics, confine their attention 
to the conduct of Israel, though for obvious reasons that 
was the most frequent subject of their animadversions. 
They had a word of God for all the nations in turn. Their 
prophetic messages did not actually reach the nations con- 
cerned. They were really intended for the ear of Israel, 
as moral lessons in the grand doctrine of an absolutely 
universal, impartial moral order, enforced by the just will 
of Jehovah. The judgments on Babylon, Egypt, Tyre, etc., 
were a concrete way of saying to their countrymen: God 
is just; He will not suffer wrong permanently to prosper ; 
therefore fear ye and sin not. The chief interest to us, as 
to those to whom these prophecies of doom were first 
spoken, lies in the breadth and power with which God’s 
moral government is asserted. Not in the accuracy with 
which the fate of the nations was predicted, revealing a 
miracle of prophetic foresight, lies the abiding value of 
these oracles, but in the fact that all nations are brought 
within the sweep of the divine moral order. That the fate 
predicted did overtake the nations is satisfactory evidence 
that the prophetic faith in that order was not mistaken.’ 

3. It was to be expected that men possessed with a 
passion for righteousness would place morality above 
religious ritual, and have for their watchword not holiness 
but righteousness. Such was the fact in the case of all 
the prophets, distinctive characteristics notwithstanding. 
It has been remarked that, while in Amos the ethical 
element is supreme, in Hosea the religious element is in 
the ascendant.2 The statement has its relative truth, but 


1The predictive aspect of prophecy almost exclusively occupied the 
attention of the older apologists, Predictions marvellously fulfilled, even 
to the minutest details, supplied for them welcome evidence that the pro- 
phets were the divinely accredited messengers of a doctrinal revelation. 
This view is now allowed to retire into the background, and the best 
evidence that God spoke through the prophets is found in the high ethical 
character of their teaching. Vide on this The Chief Hnd of Revelation, 
chap. v. 

2So Duhm in Die Theologie der Propheten, p. 127. 


PROPHETISM. 235 


not in a sense implying that Hosea placed ritual above 
righteousness. It is Hosea that says: “I desired mercy, 
and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than 
burnt offerings.” In few words this expresses the com- 
mon attitude of the prophets. Nothing is more frequent 
and more familiar in the prophetic writings than con- 
temptuous reference to careful performance of religious 
duties by a people far from God and righteousness in 
heart and life. 

This anti-ritualistic polemic of the propbets is not 
decisive as to the non-Mosaicity of the Levitical law. 
Even if the priestly code, as we find it in the middle 
books of the Pentateuch, had been an exact record of Mosaic 
legislation for the regulation of worship, and recognised as 
such by the prophets, and the religious services of their 
contemporaries had been down to the minutest detail in 
scrupulous accordance with the rubric, their verdict 
would have been the same. When Amos, in God’s name 
says: “I hate, I despise your fast days, and I will not 
smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me 
burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept 
them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat 
beasts,” ? he does not necessarily mean to characterise these 
acts as mere will-worship, an unauthorised and therefore 
unacceptable system of religious ceremonial. The question 
put in a subsequent verse: “ Did ye bring unto me sacrifices 
and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of 
Israel?” ® does seem to point that way, and, with the similar 
statement of Jeremiah, must be taken into account by 
those who contend for the Mosaic origin of the Levitical 
ritual. The point insisted on here is that the denuncia- 
tions hurled by the prophets at the religion of their con- 
temporaries is not a conclusive argument on the negative 
side of that question. However orthodox or regular it 
might be, they would have spoken of it in the same scornful 


2 08, Vis 625-75 | 2 Amos v. 21, 22, 
3 Amos vy, 25, ‘ Jer. vii, 22, 28, 


236 APOLOGETICS. 


style, so long as it was associated with an unrighteous life. 

Their animadversions were not directed against a self- 
invented worship in the interest of worship according to 
rule, but against all religion, orthodox or heterodox, divorced 
from right conduct. If the ritual was in itself legitimate, 
so much the more pronounced does their zeal for the 
ethical versus the religious element appear. And we must 
not hesitate to credit them with the courage to assert their 
great principle-—the supremacy of the moral,—even at the 
risk of their seeming to be guilty of irreverence. They 
claimed unrestricted liberty of prophesying. They did not 
hold themselves bound by each other’s opinions. The 
prophets of one generation might modify or cancel the 
oracles of those of a preceding generation. If Elijah 
tolerated images in the worship of Jehovah, that was no 
reason why Hosea should not denounce the calves. If 
Isaiah’s watchword was the inviolability of Zion, that was 
no reason why Jeremiah should not utter the word of 
doom against the temple. Like Christ, the prophets could 
dare on due occasion even to criticise Moses: witness 
their reversal of the adage concerning the fathers eating 
sour grapes, in contradiction to the traditional and pre- 
sumably Mosaic doctrine that the sins of fathers are visited 
on their children to the third and fourth generations. They 
recognised no standard of unchangeable orthodoxy : the one 
law they owned was that of loyally following the present 
light vouchsafed by heaven to their own souls. 

Nothing is more remarkable in the prophetic character 
than an exquisite sensitiveness to everything savouring of 
insincerity. It revealed itself in the abhorrence, justly com- 
mented on, of all religion divorced from right conduct. 
It showed itself equally in a careful avoidance of whatever 
approached untruthfulness in religious language. The 
prophets considered it a sin to echo current opinion 
even when true. Jeremiah stigmatises the practice as 
stealing God’s word every one from his neighbour.” He 

1 Ex, xxxiv. 7. 2 Jer. xxiii. 30. 


PROPHETISM. 237 


held, and all the prophets held, that a prophet ought to 
speak at first hand; not what had come to his ear through 
hearsay, but what God had revealed to his own heart. To 
repeat the thought of another, and say, He saith, was a 
practical lie: it was giving out as a personal conviction 
what had been slavishly accepted on authority. For a 
similar reason the prophets, Jeremiah again being witness, 
regarded with loathing the continued use of pious phrases 
which had ceased to represent conviction. “The burden 
of the Lord” is the instance given. What that phrase 
ought to mean! what it did mean to the genuine prophet, 
as when he had to foretell the approaching ruin of his 
country! And yet how lightly the burden lay on many 
to whom the next prophetic oracle was only a matter of 
idle curiosity. No wonder the sorrow-laden man of God 
uttered his stern interdict against the further use of a cant 
phrase, saying, “The burden of the Lord shall ye mention 
no more.” ? 

Two remarks more may be added before passing from 
the present topic. One is that in putting morality above 
ritual the prophets were true to the spirit of Mosaism, 
whose grand monument is the Decalogue, wherein ritual 
has no place. With Moses, as with the prophets, morality 
was primary, ritual secondary. In taking up this position 
both Moses and the prophets rose far above the level of 
heathenism, to which a breach of ritual has ever appeared 
at least as serious as a departure from the laws of justice 
and mercy. It was a great step onwards and upwards in 
the moral development of humanity, when differentiation 
of the two kinds of action began to take place, and it was 
recognised that it was a worse thing to kill, or steal, or lie, 
than to make a slight mistake in religious ceremonial. 
That first step was taken by Moses, and the prophets only 
followed his lead when they strove by unwearied iteration 
to indoctrinate their countrymen in the great truth that 
justice and mercy are better than sacrifice, It is the 

1 Jer, xxiii. 36, 


238 APOLOGETICS. 


lesson of the Scriptures from beginning to end, yet Chris- 
tendom, accepting them as the rule of faith and practice, 
is far even now from having thoroughly learned it. 

The other observation has reference to the question, 
How far had the literary prophets a hand in bringing about 
changes in religious practice, such as the abolition of pro- 
vincial sanctuaries and the concentration of worship in the 
one central sanctuary? The question is mixed up with 
debateable matters of criticism into which I cannot enter. 
The point I desire to make is that whatever line of action 
the prophets may have pursued in connection with religious 
reform, it would have for its guiding motive regard to 
ethical interests. They would strike into the movement 
because they saw that grievous moral abuses were con- 
nected with the existing customs. This remark applies 
even to Hosea. The sin he denounces is not idolatry in 
the abstract, but idolatry associated with the moral licence 
of Canaanitish and pagan Semitic worship. “ Whoredom 
and wine and new wine take away the heart;”’ how 
suggestive these words of Dionysiac orgies, accompanied 
with drunken excesses and shameless sacred prostitution! 
Who, duly concerned for temperance and purity, would 
not wish these “holy fairs” put down ? 

4. It is important to note that the moral ideal of the 
prophets, while high, is thoroughly healthy and genial. 
Two features are specially noteworthy—the spirit of com- 
passion which breathes through all prophetic utterances, 
and the entire absence from them of any trace of asceticism. 
The prophets are the champions of the poor and needy 
against the powerful and the proud, and yet while sternly 
demanding, even from kings, the practice of justice and 
mercy, they have nothing to say against a man enjoying 
life according to his station. The classic utterance here 
is that of Micah: To the man who inquires what God 
requires of him, imagining that some terrible sacrifices are 
included among the divine demands, the prophet replies: 

1 Hos. iv. 11. 


PROPHETISM. 239 


“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what 
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”! Not less 
significant is the language addressed to a luxurious selfish 
monarch by the prophet Jeremiah: “Shalt thou reign, 
because thou closest thyself in cedar? Did not thy father 
eat and drink, and do judgment and justice, and then it 
was well with him? He judged the cause of the poor and 
needy ; then it was well with him. Was not this to know 
me? saith the Lord.”? Do justly and love mercy, and for 
the rest enjoy life within the limits of wise moderation, 
what a thoroughly reasonable scheme of conduct! The 
prophets anticipated modern altruism, and understood that 
the service of others and the enjoyment of personal happi- 
ness are perfectly compatible. It never entered into their 
minds that ascetic renunciations and self-tortures, such as 
were practised both before and after their time in India, 
could benefit any one. How much healthier the Hebrew 
moral ideal than that of the Brahmans and the Buddhists, 
5. For men of such moral intensity as characterised the 
prophets, trials of their faith in the righteous government 
of God were inevitable. For the moral order of the world 
is slow, if sure, in its action, and while just on the whole 
seems far from just in many particular instances. Such 
trials are appointed for all earnest believers in God, and 
they fell upon the prophets in the most acute form just 
because they were so tremendously in earnest in believing 
that Jehovah was righteous in all His ways. Moses, the 
first of the prophets, was no exception to this statement. 
At the period of the Exodus, indeed, Providence appeared 
to be at his bidding. Said, done, was the order of the day. 
There was hardly time to pray before needed aid came. 
“Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the chil- 
dren of Israel, that they go forward.”® The hour of 
deliverance had come, and Providence was wide awake.: 
But a long dreary period of oppression had gone before, 
1 Micah vi. 8. 3 Jer. xxii. 15, 16. 3 ix. xiv. 15. 


240 APOLOGETICS. 


when the God of Israel seemed asleep, or indifferent, or 
impotent. That was for Moses a time of patient waiting 
in the Arabian desert, nursing patriotic hope and watching 
for the dawn. Such waiting on God is a notable feature 
in the experience of all men destined to leave their mark 
on the world’s history. The men of the Bible knew it 
well. Prophets and psalmists often speak of it in language 
thrilling with emotion, teaching that we have to wait on 
God, and that it is worth our while to wait. “I will wait 
upon Jehovah, that hideth His face from the house of 
Jacob,” ! writes Isaiah, pointing to good for Israel fervently 
desired, but for a season withheld. “Blessed are all they 
that wait for Him,”* writes the same prophet in a later 
prophecy, conveying the confident assurance that God 
will not permanently disappoint the expectation of those 
who trust Him. To these utterances all Old Testament 
prophecy says Amen. 

Nothing is more admirable than the perfect candour with 
which the prophets lay bare their hearts, and reveal the 
strugele going on there between faith and doubt occasioned 
by the absence of a perfect correspondence between conduct 
and lot. Two prophets of the Chaldean period, Jeremiah 
and Habakkuk, are conspicuous in this respect. Jeremiah 
writes: “ Righteous art Thou, O Lord, when I plead with 
Thee. Yet let me talk with Thee of Thy judgments: 
Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper ? wherefore 
are all they happy that deal very treacherously? Thou 
hast planted them, yea, they have taken root: they grow, 
yea, they bring forth fruit. Thou art near in their mouth, 
and far from their reins. But Thou, O Lord, knowest me: 
Thou hast seen me, and tried mine heart towards Thee.” 3 
In the same spirit Habakkuk complains: “ Art Thou not 
from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? We 
shall not die. O Lord, Thou hast ordained them for 
judement; and, O mighty God, Thou hast established them 
for correction. Thou art of purer eyes than to behold 

1 Isa, viii. 17. 2 Isa, xxx. 18. 5 Jer. xii, 1-3. 


PROPHETISM, 241 


evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest 
Thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest Thy 
tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more 
righteous than he?’! Jeremiah’s perplexity arises from 
the contrast between the prosperity of evil men within 
Israel and the tribulations which have overtaken himself, 
a man conscious of entire devotion to God’s service. What 
Habakkuk wonders at is that a nation like the Chaldeans 
is permitted to crush a people like Israel, with all her 
faults greatly superior to her oppressor, and containing 
many persons faithful to God and to righteousness, In 
both cases the problem is more or less distinctly one of 
individual experience. Both prophets virtually ask, Why 
should I, and others like me, fare so ill at the hands of 
godless men, fellow-countrymen or foreigners, who seem to 
have the power to do whatever they please? It was 
about the time of Jeremiah that the problem began to 
assume the individual form, a fact which may be used as 
a canon of criticism for fixing the dates of the book of 
Job, and of many of the Psalms in which the puzzling 
questions of human life are looked at from the individual 
point of view. It is when thus viewed that these questions 
become most perplexing. It is never very difficult to 
answer the question, Why does a nation suffer? There is 
always seen in the best nation a sufficient amount of 
misconduct to lend at least plausibility to the suggestion 
that she suffers for her sins. But when great calamity 
falls on a man like Job, described as “ perfect and upright, 
one that feared God and eschewed evil,” or like J eremiah, 
able to call God to bear witness to his moral fidelity, the 
sense of disharmony between character and lot becomes 
very acute, and the need for a theodicy very pressing. 
We cannot claim for the prophets and psalmists, or for the 
unknown author of the book of Job, that they give us a 
perfect solution of the problem, though here and there 
hints of the true solution are traceable. But we may 
1 Hab, i. 12, 13, 
Q 


242 APOLOGETICS. 


claim for them that they have adequately stated the 
difficulty, not merely by what they say, but by what they 
were. ‘They were noble, leal-hearted, morally faithful men, 
with a lofty, exacting ideal of life, to which amid all 
temptation they remained true; perfect in the scriptural 
sense of being single-minded, while not free from defects 
and infirmities. Yet, one and all, they had a poor time of 
it in this world, from a eudemonistic point of view. “So 
persecuted they the prophets.’ What does it all mean? 
that is the question they handed on to Christ for answer. 
6. It is by their passion for righteousness, and their 
invincible faith in a righteous Ruler of the world, that the 
prophets are a living witness to the reality of a divine 
revelation given to Israel; by these, and by their magnifi- 
cent optimism, to be considered in the next chapter. The 
apologetic value of Hebrew prophecy does not lie in 
predictions of future events capable of being used as 
miraculous buttresses to the Christian faith. Prediction is 
a feature of prophecy, could not fail to be; for what could 
men who with their whole soul believed in a moral order 
of the world do but declare that if sin was persisted in 
punishment would certainly follow? But prediction is, 
nevertheless, a subordinate feature of prophecy, and the 
prophets did not predict in order to supply apologists with 
arguments in support of a supernatural revelation. The 
prophets were before all things inspired witnesses to the 
reality of a divine kingdom. They were witnesses to their 
own time, each man speaking to his own generation, in 
language suggested by, and suitable to, the existing circum- 
stances. The value of their witness lies in its perfect 
adaptation to the times. They did not speak before their 
‘message was needed, before their heart was made to burn 
by the moral situation to which they addressed themselves ; 
and hence they spoke with freshness, with fervour, and 
with poetic felicity. We have, therefore, no interest in 
taking the conservative side on such a question as that 
relating to the date and authorship of the second part of 


PROPHETISM. 243 


the book of Isaiah. Our interest lies rather in the opposite 
direction. These marvellous utterances have far more 
value when viewed as proceeding from an unknown 
prophet of the exile speaking to his fellow-captives by the 
rivers of Babylon of the mercies of God in store for Israel. 
We lose, doubtless, a miracle of foresight in the form of a 
prediction of deliverance through Cyrus, but we gain a 
moral miracle of faith and hope amid circumstances 
tempting to despair. Isaiah of Jerusalem foretelling the 
advent of Cyrus two centuries or thereby before the time 
would be a wonderful vaticinator ; but an unknown prophet 
of the exile speaking comfortably to Jerusalem in her desola- 
tion is a moral hero, who, by the strength of his spirit, the 
depth of his sympathy, and the greatness of his expecta- 
tion is a convincing proof that better days are in store for 
Israel, and for the world. His value lies in what he is, 
in what God by His illuminating Spirit enables him to be, 
not in what he says about Cyrus or anybody else. 

The impression made by the oracles of Hebrew prophets 
as assertors of the moral government of God, is not 
weakened by comparison with the utterances of kindred 
spirits among other peoples, such as the Persians, the 
Chinese, and the Greeks. Zarathustra taught his country- 
men to believe in a kingdom of righteousness, presided 
over by the wise spirit, Ahura-Mazda, whom it was the 
highest duty and blessedness of men to serve. The 
Chinese book of Odes contains many poems teaching the 
reality of a divine government, and not a few dealing with 
the dark, mysterious side of Providence in a manner which 
reminds one of those passages in Old Testament literature, 
wherein prophets and psalmists wrestle with doubts as to 
the justice of God, occasioned by the prosperity of the 
wicked and the evil lot of good men. The extant writings 
of the Greek tragedians abound in powerful affirmations of 
an all-pervasive moral order. In all three cases there is 
enough light to show that God had not left Himself with- 
out a witness to His righteousness. But compared with 


244 APOLOGETICS, 


the light which shone in Israel, that vouchsafed to the 
three peoples named in the wisest sayings of their sages 
is dim. To save the goodness of Ahura-Mazda, Zarathustra 
found it necessary to invent an anti-god, Angri-mainyus, 
who should be responsible for all the evil in the world. 
There is no dualism in Hebrew prophecy ; in the unknown 
prophet of the exile there is an express repudiation of it, 
as if with conscious reference to the creed of the Persians: 
“T form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and 
create evil.”! The Chinese poets do their best to vindicate 
the divine character against all suspicions of unrighteous- 
ness or indifference, arising out of untoward appearances. 
But they come far short of the Hebrew prophets, both in 
their perception of the mysteriousness of the problem and 
in their solution. In their easy, shallow theodicy they 
resemble Job’s friends, who thought the clearing of God’s 
character a very simple affair, rather than Job himself, 
who was profoundly conscious that God’s way was in the 
sea. The following stanza may serve as a sample :-—* 
‘* How great is God, who ruleth men below! 
In awful terrors now arrayed. 
His dealings seem a recklessness to show, 
From which we, shuddering, shrink dismayed. 
But men at first from Heaven their being drew, 
With nature liable to change. 


All hearts in infancy are good and true, 
But time and things those hearts derange.” 


God being thus cleared, the poet goes on to lay the 
blame of existing calamity on the king and his ministers. 
In another poem a famine is represented as a judgment on 
the king for employing worthless characters as ministers : 8 

s¢°Twas merit once that riches gained ; 
The case how: different now. 


Troubles through all our time have reigned, 
And greater still they grow 


1 Isa. xlv. 7. 

* Taken from the She-King ; or, The Book of Poetry, translated inte 
English by Dr. Legge. Vide Chinese Classics, iii. 321. 

* She-King, p. 349, 


PROPHETIC OPTIMISM. 245 


Like grain unhulled, those men in place, 
Like fine rice those who find no grace, 
Ye villains of yourselves retire, 
Why thus prolong my grief and ire,” 
fschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides grandly proclaimed 
the doctrine of Nemesis, teaching their countrymen in their 
own dialect that God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace 
unto the lowly But in the background of their picture 
of human life is the dark figure of fate, a blind force 
exercising sway over both gods and men, without regard to 
character or moral interests. This pagan conception has 
nothing answering to it in Hebrew prophecy. 


CHAPTER VL 
PROPHETIC OPTIMISM. 


LitERATURE.—Principal Fairbairn (of Glasgow), Prophecy ; 
Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma; Adeney, The 
Hebrew Utopia ; Orelli, Die Alitestamentliche Weissagung von 
der Vollendung des Grottesreichs (translated by T. & T. Clark) ; 
Riehm, Die Messianische Weissagung, 2nd ed. (translated); 
Briggs, Messianic Prophecy; Delitzsch, Messianische Weissa- 
gungen im Geschichtlichen Folge (translated). Vide also 
Duhm’s work; and Oehler, Die Theologie des ATs.; and 
Schultz, Alttest. Theol. 


Not less conspicuous in the character of the prophets 
than their passion for righteousness is the buoyant hope- 
fulness with which they contemplate the future. Their 
writings are pervaded by the spirit. of optimism. They 
believe, in spite of all present appearances to the contrary, 
that great good is in store for Israel and the world. 

Hither of these characteristics by itself would have 


1 English readers may easily form a good general idea of the moral and 
religious attitude of the Greek tragedians by perusing Professor D’Arcy 
Thomson’s Sales Attici, in which extracts in Greek are given on one page 
and English translations on the page opposite, 


246 APOLOGETICS. 


sufficed to make the prophets outstanding men in the 
history of the human race. The passion for righteousness 
and the passion of hope are so far from being common, 
that those in whom either of them appears in a high 
degree must ever take rank among the world’s remarkable 
men. But it is the combination of the two that makes 
the figure of the Hebrew prophet unique. The surprise is 
that a man of such moral intensity, so severe a critic of 
his time, should also be optimistic in his view of the 
future. It comes so natural to the moral critic to be 
gloomy and pessimistic that we wonder when we observe 
that these men who made the most exacting demands from 
their contemporaries, and pronounced on them the most 
unsparing condemnation for failing to comply therewith, give 
the most glowing, enthusiastic pictures to be met with in the 
world’s literature of a golden age to come, when the loftiest 
ideals of goodness and happiness should be fully realised. 
If these two sides of the prophetic character appear 
incongruous, not less so appear the objects to which the 
two ruling passions were directed. The passion for right- 
eousness revealed to the prophet’s eye an evil present; the 
passion of hope opened up to his view a perfect future. 
The two things are not in one line, they seem antagonistic, 
they present an apparently hopeless antinomy. If genera- 
tion after generation the present be always evil, what 
reason is there to expect that any coming generation will 
be much better, not to say really good? Have we not 
here two irreconcilable products of prophetic thought, influ- 
enced by two contrary moods strangely meeting together 
in minds of rare type? It is no small part of the im- 
perishable merit of the prophets that they made no attempt 
to conceal the antinomy; There the two things stand side 
by side in their writings: black pictures of moral short- 
coming, bright pictures of the future character of the same 
people. “Ah, sinful nation—a people laden with iniquity.” 
“Thy people also shall be all righteous.” It is a com- 
panion antinomy to the one pointed out in the last chapter, 


PROPHETIC OPTIMISM. 24° 


that, viz. between the ideal of God’s moral government and 
the moral confusions of real life. The prophets had at 
their command no philosophy offering a complete solution 
in either case. They simply acknowledged frankly both 
terms of the antinomy, and for the rest walked by faith. 
Not that hints of solution did not suggest themselves. 
Men could not feel, as the prophets did, the heavy pressure 
of the contradiction without seeking, and to a certain 
extent finding, a way of escape. A most instructive 
instance of light springing out of collision, like a spark 
struck by a flint out of steel, is supplied in Jeremiah’s 
oracle of the New Covenant. The prophet contemplates 
the return of the exiles to their own land, and their dwell- 
ing there in righteousness and peace. But the thought 
occurs to him: to what purpose return to Judea if the old 
weary round of transgression is to be repeated, and what 
hope does the past history of Israel give of anything 
better? How bridge over the gulf between the bygone 
centuries of disobedience and the hoped-for future of 
fidelity to God? After long brooding, the answer comes 
at last in the visions of the night. What if the law 
written on stone tablets were written on the heart? No 
wonder the prophet, on awaking in the morning, after the 
great revelation, found that his sleep had been sweet. 

Let us consider the source of prophetic optimism, the 
expression of it, and its value. 

1. The source was not the mere temperament or disposi- 
tion of the prophet. The prophet as such is not charac- 
teristically hopeful ; his temptation rather is to be querulous, 
morose, gloomy, desponding. Taking moral intensity to be 
the fundamental feature in the prophetic character, the 
tendency unquestionably is to be so overwhelmed with a 
sense of the evil of the present as to be unable to hope for 
improvement. The prophet’s eye is apt to descry on 
the horizon of the future only judgment. The Baptist’s 
preaching was all of the coming wrath, the hewing axe, the 
winnowing fan, the unquenchable fire. 


248 APOLOGETICS, 


Shall we say then that the bright future was an ideal 
which the prophet created as a solace to relieve the gloom 
of the present? Hardly. A modern poet might write a 
bright poem to charm away melancholy, conscious that the 
verses he indited were only an artistic creation, with no 
pretensions to truth. But a Hebrew prophet was not a 
mere poet or sentimental dreamer: he was a man of serious 
spirit and practical mind, in dead earnest in all he said and 
did. If his prophecies of the future were poetic creations, 
they were creations in which he believed with all his heart. 
As he conceived the future, so he believed it would be. 

To account for the hopefulness of the prophet we must 
fall back on his religious faith. It arose directly and 
immediately out of his faith in the election of Israel. If 
God chose Israel for a certain purpose, then that purpose 
must stand: that was self-evident, axlomatically certain, to 
him. With Paul he believed that the gifts and calling of 
God are without repentance. God’s purpose in Israel’s 
election might be variously conceived, and according to 
the conception would be the idea formed of the eventual 
fulfilment. If the purpose was to make Israel a holy 
state, then the future would present itself as that of a 
nation doing righteousness. If the purpose was to use 
Israel as a vehicle for conveying to the world the true 
religion, then the vision of the future might not involve 
prosperity for the chosen people, or even the preservation of 
her existence; but it would certainly exhibit to the seer’s 
eye a world filled with the knowledge of the true God. The 
one thing sure was that the divine aim would be realised. 

But this does not go to the root of the matter, Elec- 
tion is an act of will. The great question is, What is the 
character of the electing will? In other words, the ulti- 
mate source of prophetic optimism must be found in the 
prophetic idea of God. 

Now, the great broad fact here is that in the prophetic 
conception of the divine character mercy, grace occupies a 
very prominent place. God is nowhere conceived of as 


PROPHETIC OPTIMISM. 249 


sustaining a merely legal relation to men, making certain 
demands on them which it lies with them to comply with, 
and administering rewards and punishments according as 
His behests are obeyed or disobeyed. The “covenant of 
works” is a theological abstraction representing an element 
in God’s relations with men, but not a distinct substantive 
reality. At no crisis of human history, whether in the 
garden of Eden or out of it, was the element of grace, 
according to the biblical representation, wanting. God 
appears evermore as more than a moral Governor, even as 
a Redeemer, a Saviour; not only as an objective Power 
working on the side of righteousness, but as a gracious 
Power helping men to be righteous. The gracious aspect 
of the divine character is set in the forefront even of the 
Decalogue, the preface of which recalls to remembrance 
the deliverance from bondage. In that great event God’s 
grace showed itself in outward providence working for 
Israel's redemption. Still therein God appears doing for 
Israel what she could not do for herself, in “love and 
pity” redeeming a helpless, enslaved race from a state of 
bondage; not rewarding for work done, but benignantly 
conferring benefit unmerited. In the same external, pro- 
vidential sense God showed His grace to Israel all through 
her long history: as when He saved Jerusalem from Sen- 
nacherib’s army, and brought the exiles back from Babylon. 
But divine grace is not conceived of as limited to the 
external sphere. It is thought of also, especially in the 
later prophets, as a beneficent power working within men, 
enabling them to fulfil the divine will. Thus viewed, God 
is not merely a Being who sets before men a lofty moral 
ideal, but One who helps them to realise it; not simply 
a transcendent Majesty who says “thou shalt” under 
penalties, but an immanent spirit, conveying inspiration 
and strength to the soul. “The ideal without is also the 
power within.”* This is the thought underlying Jeremiah’s 
great prophecy of the law written on the heart. 
? Jones, Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher, p. 805. 


: 250 APOLOGETICS. 


God’s grace in biblical representations works ordinarily 
within the sphere of the covenant and for the benefit of the 
elect people. But it is not restricted to Israel, as if Jehovah, 
while loving, kind, and good to Israel, her Husband, Father, 
Redeemer, were utterly regardless of the rest of mankind. 
A god so conceived would be only a national god, which, 
as we have seen, was not the kind of deity the prophets 
believed in. No barbaric divinity is Jehovah, gracious to 
His favoured race, ferocious towards all other races; but 
one who is good to all, and whose tender mercies are over 
all His works Him all lands may be invited to serve 
with gladness, because He is good, and His mercy is ever- 
lasting.2 To Him all the ends of the earth are bid look 
for salvation, as the one God over all, and alike gracious to — 
all.8 

With such an idea of God, prophetic optimism becomes 
easily intelligible. There is no limit to what may be 
expected from Almighty Love: “With Him is plenteous 
redemption,” * in all senses, and in all spheres, external or 
internal, and in all parts of the world. The things con- 
nected with sin may be too strong for us to cope with, but 
they are not too strong for God.® He can pardon the 
most aggravated guilt, subdue the power of evil habit, 
extricate from the chains of punitive consequences. The 
prophets speak as men who believed this with all their 
hearts, and cherished boundless expectations from God’s 
beneficent will. The style in which they express them- 
selves on this theme is magnificent. Listen to Micah: 
“Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, 
and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His 
heritage? He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He 
delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, He will have 
compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and 
Thou will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” ® 
Or to Hosea: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love 


1 Ps. exlv. 9. 2 Ps. c. 5. 3 Tsa. xlv. 22. 
‘Ps, cxxx. 7. 5 Ps, Ixv. 8. 6 Micah vii. 18, 19. 


PROPHETIC OPTIMISM. 251 


them freely ; I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall 
grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.” ! 
God a Physician, a magnanimous Friend, who overcomes evil 
with good, a springtide of hope and beauty and shooting 
life: what may not be expected from Him for Israel and 
for the world ? 

It is by keeping in mind the idea of God cherished by 
the prophets that we can understand not merely why they 
hoped so greatly, but why hope characterises them so 
markedly in contrast to the sages of pagan peoples. For 
the heathen poet the golden age lies in the past; for the 
Hebrew prophet it lies in the future. Whence this 
difference? Its ultimate source is diversity in their 
respective conceptions of God. The prophet believed, as 
no heathen poet or philosopher ever did, in the goodness 
of God. He discovered traces of that goodness in the 
whole history of his own people, and from the favour 
shown to her in the past inferred for her a great future 
destiny. _ More and more he opened his mind to the 
thought that from the same divine goodness would flow 
unimaginable benefit to the whole human race: that the 
latter days would give birth to a new heavens and a new 
earth wherein should dwell righteousness. For lack of 
this bright, inspiring faith in a good God heathen sages 
were not able to be so hopeful. Their measure of the 
possible was the actual, and the actual is so full of con- 
fusion, uncertainty, and chance, that pessimism for one 
who looks not higher seems inevitable. 

2. The hope of Hebrew prophecy found very varied 
expression, An exhaustive account of the diverse forms 
under which the future good is presented is not here aimed 
at; it will suffice to indicate one or two of the leading 
types. The ideal is sometimes political. The picture 
presented is that of a nation delivered from the power of 
its foes, enjoying material prosperity under a just, wise 
government, and minded to shun the offences which had 

1 Hos. xiv. 4, 5. 


252 APOLOGETICS, 


brought upon it the calamities from which it is now happily 
rid. Several of the earlier prophetic books offer a tableau 
of this kind. Thus at the close of the book of Amos we 
read : 


“Jn that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that 
is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise 
up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: that 
they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the 
heathen, which are called by my name, saith the Lord that 
doeth this. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the 
plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes 
him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet 
wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring again 
the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build 
the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant 
vineyards, and drink the wine thereof. They shall also make 
gardens, and eat the fruit of them; and I will plant them 
upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of 
their land which I have given them.” 


The prophet, it will be observed, goes back for his ideal 
state of national felicity to the time of David. Israel, as 
it was then, with as good a king, with as much internal 
concord, and with similar outward wellbeing, and fearing 
no foe: that will suffice for an ideal of the future good. 
In some of the prophetic programmes of this type much 
stress is laid upon the king who is to reign in the good 
time coming, as if given a king of the right stamp all must 
go well. In such prophecies the character of the king is 
highly idealised. Thus Isaiah describes the model king as 
one filled with the spirit of wisdom and understanding and 
the fear of God, who shall administer justice with dis- 
crimination and impartiality, and shall show himself the 
friend of the poor and the’ stern foe of all iniquity? He 
represents him as bearing, as the vicegerent of God, divine 
titles: “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting 
Father, Prince of Peace.” It is to such prophecies of an 
ideal king that the title “ Messianic” properly applies. 

1 Amos ix. 11-15. 3 Isa. xi. 1-5, ® Isa. ix. 6. 


PROPHETIC OPTIMISM. 253 


Isaiah’s conception of the good time coming belongs to 
the political type. His ideal is a nation well governed, and 
enjoying in rich measure the blessings of abundance and 
peace. It is an ideal such as a wise, high-minded states- 
man might project, and which might conceivably be 
realised under the natural conditions of human society. 
To later prophets such an ideal no longer appeared attain- 
able, or, if attained, the best possible; and accordingly in 
their writings the swmmwm bonwm undergoes perceptible 
transformation. The political gives place to the ethical, 
a reformed state to a regenerated people. So in Jere- 
miah’s famcus oracle of the new covenant. To this pro- 
phet Isaiah’s ideal, even if attained, seemed a comparatively 
poor thing. Of what great avail were good government 
and plenty to eat, if the people were not individually 
righteous? The consummation devoutly to be wished 
were a people with God’s law written on their heart. 
But how is this end to be reached? It seems something 
supernatural, not attainable under ordinary conditions. So 
Jeremiah felt ; hence his remarkable idea of a new cove- 
nant. He despaired of obtaining any result of great and 
permanent value under the original Mosaic covenant or 
constitution. Herein he differed from his brother-prophet 
Isaiah. Isaiah stood on the old covenant, and aimed at 
a state in a sound healthy condition, such as any wise 
statesman might desire. Jeremiah gave the old covenant 
up as hopeless. He demanded, not reform, but revolution, 
a new constitution for a new people consisting of men and 
women whose hearts were right with God. He still con- 
ceives of regenerated Israel as a nation, and, like the older 
prophets, attaches great importance to the person of the 
king. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will 
raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign 
and prosper, and shall execute justice in the earth: In His 
days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely.”? 
And, like Isaiah, he invests the king with divine titles, 


1 Jer. xxiii. 5, 6. 


| 254 APOLOGETICS. 


But there is a noteworthy change in the character of the 
attributions. Isaiah’s titles are titles of majesty nd 
dignity; with Jeremiah the ethical comes to the front. 
“This is the name whereby He shall be called, the Lord 
our righteousness,” * It is not legitimate exegesis to extract 
from this name, as Jeremiah used it, the Pauline system of 
theology; but it is legitimate to remark that the name is 
in sympathy with that prophet’s great thought: the law 
written on the heart. If Jehovah is to write His law on 
regenerated Israel’s heart, then He is the source of Israel’s 
righteousness, and the king who reigns over regenerated 
Israel may well bear a name that bears witness to this 
truth. 

Ezekiel seems to be in sympathy with Jeremiah in his 
conception of the good in store for Israel. He represents 
Jehovah as making this promise to His people returned 
from captivity: “A new heart also will I give you, and a 
new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the 
stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart 
of flesh.”2 It has, indeed, been maintained that the re- 
generation he speaks of is not moral, but ritual, and that 
his whole tendency leads on to Talmudism.? That is a 
question which cannot here be discussed. It must certainly 
be admitted that the spirit of Ezekiel is in many respects 
different from that of Jeremiah, and that he is a priest 
quite as much as he is a prophet‘ Nevertheless, it 
remains true that there is essential agreement between the 
two prophets in their point of view. Both desiderate 
regeneration as necessary to the realisation of the ideal. 
If they differ, it is as to the means of regeneration, or as 
to the kind of laws to be written on the heart. 


1 Jer. xxiii. 6. 2 Ezek, xxxvi. 26. 

8 Duhm, Die Theologie der Propheten, pp. 258, 263. 

* Jeremiah also was a priest officially, but not in spirit. Darmesteter 
truly says: ‘‘The priest in him was the servant and instrument of the 
prophet ; in him, as in Isaiah, it is the prophet that dominates, that is to 
say, the reformer of the moral life, of the social life, of the political life,”— 
Les Prophétes d’Israel, p. 69. 


PROPHETIC OPTIMISM. 255 


In the oracles of the great prophet of the exile we meet 
with an ideal of a third type, which may be distinguished 
as the religious. Here the model king disappears from 
view, and with him the nation, and Israel becomes a 
prophet or missionary fulfilling the high vocation of teach- 
ing the nations the true religion. “I will also give Thee 
for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou mayest be my salva- 
tion unto the end of the earth.”* Salvation consists in the 
knowledge of the true God, and Israel’s honourable function 
is to be to communicate that knowledge as the inspired 
apostle of the faith. The golden age shall have come, and 
the ideal been realised, when the earth is filled with the 
knowledge of God. Under this view the highest good is a 
boon, not for the elect race merely, but for the world: her 
peculiar reward is the honour of being the instrument for 
achieving so great a result. “It is a light thing that Thou 
shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, 
and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give 
Thee for a light to the Gentiles.” Israel becomes great 
among the nations by becoming a servant to the nations in 
their highest interests, by acting as their religious teacher. 
Her glory is that she gives to the world the true idea of 
God. 

High vocations bring not only renown but tribulations. 
The missionary of the true God must be a great sufferer. 
“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm 
of the Lord revealed?” “He is despised and rejected of 
men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”® This 
is the darkest phase in the sombre picture of human life, 
supplying a choice theme for the pessimist—the fact that 
those who have the faculty and the will to do the world 
most good usually receive the worst treatment at the world’s 
hands. But there is another side to the picture, as bright 
as the other is dark. The suffering of the wise and the 
good is never in vain: it benefits the very men who are 
the cause of the suffering. “By His knowledge shall my 

1 Isa, xlix, 6, 2 Isa. liii. 1. ® Isa, liii, 3, 


256 APOLOGETICS, 


righteous servant justify many; for He shall bear their 
iniquities.”* Here is the answer to the riddle propounded 
in the book of Job: why do the righteous suffer? Here 
the optimism of the Hebrew prophets reaches its culmina- 
tion and its vindication. That optimism does not consist 
in shutting the eyes to the evil that is in the world. On 
the contrary, it knows how to take that evil into the ideal 
as one of its constitutive elements, and transmute it into 
the highest good. The wise and the good suffer because 
the world does not know them, and by their patience they 
conquer their foes, and “divide the spoil with the strong.” 
The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is the last and highest 
word of Hebrew prophecy concerning the summum bonum. 
It sets forth the ideal as power reached through weakness, 
honour through shame, healing through pain, righteousness 
through wrong; reached not merely for the one who endures 
the weakness, the shame, the pain, and the wrong, but 
through him for the many. 

3. When we inquire what is the value of prophetic 
optimism, we mean how far does it possess objective and 
permanent significance. That it possessed subjective value 
for the prophets themselves is a matter of course. It 
consoled them amidst the tribulations and calamities and 
iniquities of the present; it made life worth living; it gave 
the weary spirit the wings of a dove, on which it could fly 
away to a dream-world and be at rest. But what amount 
of truth is in these prophetic forecasts of the future, to 
what extent has history realised prophetic ideals ? 

Now it is a commonplace in the interpretation of pro- 
phecy that all prophecies have not been fulfilled, and that 
some of them, in the precise form in which they are given, 
never will or can be fulfilled, The world has never yet 
seen Isaiah’s model state, and there is little likelihood that 
it ever will, His conception of a great world-monarchy, 
embracing Egypt, Assyria, and Palestine, is now simply a 
monument to his genius. Jeremiah’s noble thought of a 

1 Isa, liii. 11, 


PROPHETIC OPTIMISM, “ 257 


regenerated Israel is also destined to remain an unrealised 
ideal. The model king of Davidic type never came. 
There were some good kings, such as Hezekiah and Josiah, 
but they came far short of the prophetic ideal, and most of 
the kings were such as would break a prophet’s heart. 
But it does not follow that prophetic ideals were idle 
dreams containing not even a kernel of truth, 

In the first place, if there was any reality in the election 
of Israel, then the thought which underlies all Messianic 
prophecy, so-called, must be true, viz. that a great good is 
coming. When Jehovah chose Israel, He had a purpose in 
view which must be fulfilled, He commenced a process 
which must reach its consummation, He planted a vine 
which must bear its fruit. If no good is coming, then God’s 
election of Israel is a failure, or rather it never took place ; 
it is simply a notion of the Hebrew people having nothing 
answering to it in the realm of reality. What form the 
coming good is to take may be beforehand very uncertain ; 
of its nature the prophets themselves may have had but a 
vague idea largely coloured in the case of each prophet by 
the circumstances of his own time. In consequence of the 

vagueness of their delineations, it may not be easy for us 

afterhand to detect a very striking or convincing corre- 
spondence between their pictures of the good that was 
coming and the good that came through Jesus Christ. 
It is certainly not so easy as many people imagine. 
But this at least ought to be true, that the prophets 
were not mistaken in believing that the best was 
yet to be. | 

This at least, and more. For if Israel was indeed an 
elect people, elect for the world’s good, as well as for her 
own, the prophets were surely elect men who had some- 
thing to say concerning the nature of the good, not merely 
to contemporary Israelites, but to men of all time. This 
being a reasonable and consistent view to take of them, we 
may with confidence extract from their writings some 
general outlines of the good that was to be. We may 

R 


“258 APOLOGETICS. 


expect to find in their “Messianic” oracles at least an 
irreducible minimum of didactic significance. 

One legitimate inference is the vast importance that 
may attach to a single individual as an instrument for the 
realisation of God’s purpose in the vocation of Israel. 
This thought is suggested by the stress laid by the prophets 
upon the ideal king. “Behold, a king shall reign in 
righteousness!”* They speak as if the swmmum bonum 
might come through one man. It is characteristic of them 
to attach importance to the influence of the individual. 
They are hero-worshippers: the history of the world for 
them is the history of great men. The great man, the 
man in high place and worthy of his place, can do wonders. 
He “shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a 
covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, 
as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”? If this 
be true of any great man, of any noble-minded prince 
among men, how much more of the greatest, the ideal King, 
the Prince of princes! The value thus set in Hebrew 
prophecy on the moral hero prepares us for finding that 
the final result of the long historical development in Israel 
is one supreme man, the Light of the world. That the 
evolution of the divine purpose should issue in this may at 
first seem strange and disappointing. We began with the 
idea of a nation, a holy state in which all the people 
should be righteous, and after fourteen centuries we get 
what? A single unique man, of ideal worth, springing 
like a root out of a very dry ground. We may seek to 
reconcile ourselves to this result, not merely as in itself 
of inestimable value, but as the legitimate.product of a 
process of development, by various lines of thought. 
From the point of view of comparative religion, it has 

i/Tsa, .xxxit 1. 

2 Isa, xxxii. 2. Cheyne translates: ‘A great man shall be as an hiding- 
place from the wind ;” and adds the comment, ‘‘ Strictly any one (king or 
prince) who belongs to the class of great men.” The Prophecies of Isaiah, 


in loc. On the idea of the passage, vide G. A. Smith’s work on Isaiah, vol. 
i. chap. xv., with the suggestive heading, ‘‘ A Man,” 


PROPHETIC OPTIMISM. 259 


been observed? that there comes a time in the religious 
development of nations which have been in a position to 
develop their intellectual life in purity and tranquillity 
through a long period of time, when the centre of gravity 
of all higher interests shifts from without to within, 
With this change comes a new form of spiritual fellow- 
ship. In place of the nation there arises the school, the 
society, or the holy order. The centre of influence in such 
fellowships is an individual teacher of commanding per- 
sonality. Illustrative examples are supplied in Socrates, 
Buddha, and Christ. There may be something worth 
noting in this. But for one who believes in a special 
revelation of God to Israel, it is more helpful to reflect 
that all Hebrew prophecy points to the individual as the 
source of salvation. I say not to the Messiah, as if they 
had all one definite personality in view, specially revealed 
to them as the final bringer in of the golden age. The 
thing here insisted on is the prominence given to the 
principle of individuality, and the inference suggested that 
the ultimate fulfilment of God’s gracious purpose will come 
through one man. We may not be on so sure ground 
when we attempt to determine the manner of the man by 
aid of prophetic delineations. Historic exegesis may not 
justify us in treating Isaiah’s list of wondrous attributes as 
personal characteristics, and so arriving at the conclusion 
that the Saviour of the latter days is to be not merely a 
great man, but God Almighty? But it will justify us at 
least in expecting Him to be an Anointed One, divinely 


1 Oldenberg, Buddha: His Life, His Doctrine, His Order, pp. 8, 4. 

? Professor Robertson Smith remarks (The Prophets of Israel, p. 307) : 
“‘ The prophet does not say that the king is the mighty God and the everlast- 
ing Father, but that His name is divine and eternal, that is, that the 
divine might and everlasting fatherhood of Jehovah are displayed in His 
rule.” Ewald (Die Propheten des Alten Bundes) says: ‘*‘ We must look on 
it as the name which a new king assumed to be placed on his shield, banner, 
or arms ; it could not be allowed more than a limited space upon the shield, 
and therefore had to be condensed. 

Wonderful-Counsellor, Hero-God, 
(eee hee Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” 


260 APOLOGETICS. 


endowed with right kingly qualities of wisdom, justice, and 
benignity. 

The ethical ideal of Jeremiah suggests another inference 
as to the nature of the good that is to be. His conception 
of a regenerated nation contains an element which goes 
beyond the limits of the ideal as he conceived it. He 
thought of a regenerated Israel, all her citizens having 
God’s law written on their hearts. But why should 
regeneration be national? If you keep to externals, to 
such matters as language, race, land, and custom, you 
properly limit your ideal to a nation. But the moral law 
written on the heart has nothing merely national about it: 
it is the affair of humanity. 

Consciously or unconsciously, therefore, Jeremiah gives 
us the great idea of a kingdom of God independent of 
nationality, including among its citizens all the pure in 
heart. 

A royal man, and a divine kingdom: these are two 
of the goods that are to come in the era of consummation. 
But how are they to be connected? Let the prophet of 
the exile answer. The ideal man will make himself the 
king of hearts by wisdom and by suffering. He will show 
to teachable spirits the true God, and they will gladly take 
his yoke upon them; he will suffer at the hands of the 
unrighteous, and will conquer his enemies by meek endur- 
ance. 

These three things, the highest boons of God to men: 
a moral Hero, a kingdom of the good, and the moral Hero 
making Himself the king of that kingdom by spiritual 
insight and self-sacrifice, as the suffering servant of God, 
are the chief fruitage of that remarkable group of pro- 
phecies usually called Messianic, which embody the 
optimistic ideals of Hebrew seers. They are not extracted 
from stray texts, or based on remarkable special pre- 
dictions like that of the virgin conceiving, but represent 
the main drift of Messianic oracles. “The rod out of the 
stem of Jesse,” the law written on the heart, and the “man 


JUDAISM. 261 


of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” are the foreground 
of the prophetic delineation of the future, the kernel of the 
summum bonwm as conceived by the prophetic imagination, 
as the prophecies containing them are among the highest 
products of prophetic genius. They follow each other in 
the natural order of succession: first the king sketched 
by Isaiah of Jerusalem, then the regenerate people the 
lovely dream of Jeremiah, then the suffering servant of 
Jehovah presented to our view in all his tragic dignity by 
the prophet of the exile; prophetic insight becoming 
clearer and deeper with the course of time and the 
progress of events, 

In Jesus Christ these three ideals meet. He is the 
toyal Man. He brings in the kingdom of grace. He is 
the man of sorrow who conquers human hearts by suffering 
love. Is this historic realisation of prophetic ideals an 
accident or a God-appointed fulfilment ? 


CHAPTER VIL 
JUDAISM. 


LITERATURE.—Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, B. iv.; 
Wellhausen, Prolegomena; Stade, Geschichte des Volles 
Israel; W. Robertson Smith, The Old Testatment in the 
Jewish Church (1st ed. 1881, 2nd ed. much enlarged, 1892); 
Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie, 4te Aufl. ; Toy, Judaism 
and Christianity; Sack, Die Altjudische religion; W. R. 
Smith, article on the “Psalter” in Encyclopedia Britannica 
(the main conclusions of this article are embodied in the new 
edition of The Old Testament in the Jewish Church); Cheyne, 
Lhe Origin of the Psalter (Bampton Lectures). 


In passing from Prophetism to Judaism as introduced 
by Ezra, we seem to make a great descent. As we study 
the relative literature, the thought suggests itself, what a 
fall is here! Reading first Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the 
Prophet of the exile, then taking up Ezra and N ehemiah, 


262 APOLOGETICS. 


we feel as if we were making a sudden plunge from poetry 
to prose, from inspiration to legalism, from a religion of 
faith to a religion of self-righteousness. The very prayers 
of Nehemiah seem to breathe a new spirit: “ Remember me, 
O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds 
that I have done for the house of my God, and for the 
offices thereof”! “Remember me, O my God, for good.” ? 

Reverence for Scripture makes one hesitate to trust 
himself in forming such a judgment. And yet such 
hesitation is mistaken. Judaism may be a natural and 
legitimate step in the onward progress of the religion of 
Israel. God may be in it, using it as a preparation for 
the final stage, a harbinger of Christ. But that is quite 
compatible with its being in comparison with something 
going before inferior and weak, as even the advocates of 
traditional views as to the course of revelation will allow 
when they remember that the law came after the promise, 
to which nevertheless it was but a humble handmaid. 
The first thing needful, therefore, to a right understanding 
of the present phase of Israel’s religion, is to grasp firmly 
the fact that it is a distinct thing from anything going 
before, and a decidedly inferior thing. 

Judaism, apart altogether from critical questions, was 
distinct from Mosaism. The distinguishing feature of 
Mosaism, as we have seen, was that it asserted the 
supremacy of the moral, as compared with ritual. This 
fundamental principle the prophets reasserted with new 
emphasis and widened range of application, so showing 
themselves to be the true sons of Moses, On the other 
hand, the distinctive characteristic of Judaism was that it 
put ritual on a level with morality, treated Levitical rules 
as of equal importance with the Decalogue, making no dis- 
tinction between one part of the law and another, but 
demanding compliance with the prescribed ceremonial of 
worship as not less necessary to good relations with God 
than a righteous life. This was a new thing in Israel; 

1 Neh. xiii. 14. 2 Neh. xiii. 31, 


JUDAISM. 263 


and it was a great downcome: a descent from liberty to 
bondage, from evangelic to legal relations with God, from 
the spirit to the letter. It was so great a downcome that 
the difficulty is to see how God could have any hand in it. 
How could the Jehovah that inspired the Hebrew legislator 
and the prophets, giving to them those great, broad, free 
thoughts which still possess the highest spiritual value, 
be a party to the inbringing of an elaborate system of 
religious formalism? Can we imagine Him inspiring 
Ezra the scribe as he plies his task of putting into 
written form the Levitical legislation as it lies before 
us now in the middle books of the Pentateuch? Is not 
' this new type of functionary, the scribe, the very antipodes 
of the prophet, and as antipathetic to the very idea of 
inspiration as the latter is in sympathy with it? And 
what is the effect of Ezra’s work? Is it not a reversion 
to that confusion of morality with ritual characteristic of 
pagan conceptions of right conduct, as exemplified in the 
Egyptian trial of the dead? It was the merit of Moses 
and the prophets, we saw, that they differentiated between 
the two kinds of action, as of altogether different value. 
What then, one naturally asks, is this Ezra movement but 
a cancelling of their beneficent work, and a lapse from the 
high moral level reached by them to the low level of 
heathenism ?? 

Such is the difficulty we have to face. It has been 
observed that Levitical ordinances, whether they existed 
before the exile or no, were not yet God’s word to Israel 
at that time? The question is, Could they be God’s word 
after the exile? Is it not more easy to conceive them 
being God’s word at the beginning than so late in the day 
after He had given to Israel a far higher word? Do these 
ordinances, coming in at so late a period, not look very 


1 Wellhausen, in his Prolegomena to the History of Israel, p. 422, says, 
"*The cultus is the heathen element in the Israelite religion.” 

2 Professor Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church 
2nd ed. p. 310. 


964 APOLOGETICS. 


like a degeneracy such as is wont to occur in the religions of 
the pagans, whose first thoughts of God are often better than 
their last ; such as took place, eg., in the Persian religion, 
which as reformed by Zarathustra seems to have been a com- 
paratively pure thing, but in after times became more and 
more an elaborate system of ceremonialism ? What if during 
the exile the captives had taken lessons from their masters ? 

The attempt to show that the introduction of Levitical- 
ism, viewed as happening after the exile, might be a 
legitimate step in the onward march of the religion of 
revelation, does seem very discouraging. And yet there is 
another side to the matter. Leviticalism, Judaism, may be 
conceived of as a husk to protect the kernel of ethical 
monotheism. Ezra and his companions, just because they 
were faithful disciples of the prophets, zealous for the 
honour of Jehovah, the God of Israel, might regard the 
enforcement of a carefully prepared scheme of religious 
ritual as the best means of protecting that honour from 
violation. It is significant, as an indication that this was 
really their point of view, that in the earlier period of the 
captivity the prophet Ezekiel began to occupy himself with 
the preparation of such a scheme. We must not try to 
minimise the significance of this fact by laying stress on 
the circumstance that Ezekiel was a priest. It is more to 
the purpose to note that the priest was also a prophet, and 
that in his whole way of thinking he was a link of 
connection between Prophetism and Judaism. The last 
eight chapters of Ezekiel’s book of prophecy appear to be 
a first sketch of a Levitical system, prepared by one who 
believed that it would serve the end which all the prophets 
had at heart. These chapters, so viewed, are one of the 
strongest proofs that the priestly legislation of the Penta- 
teuch was not Mosaic. If it had been, why should Ezekiel 
have occupied himself with the preparation of a fancy 
programme? It is difficult on that view to regard that 
programme as serious, as anything more than a pastime to 
while away the weary days of the captivity. But this by 


JUDAISM. 265 


the way. The point insisted on here is that Ezekiel the 
prophet takes also a great interest in ritual, and that this 
fact may fairly be adduced as a proof that to men setting 
a high value on the prophetic idea of God, the careful 
regulation of religious ritual might, in the light of past 
experience, appear a matter of importance. ; 

From this point of view we can see how Judaism, though 
wearing a suspicious resemblance to heathenism, in attach- 
ing so much importance to ritual, nevertheless stands on a 
different footing. The promoters of the new movement 
did not really put ritual on a level with morality, as of 
equal importance in the sight of God. They simply 
regarded it as a very important means towards the great 
end of keeping the people of Israel faithful in heart and 
life to God. And it is not difficult to imagine how they 
could arrive at this conclusion. We have but to make a 
little effort to get inside the minds of the exiles. By the 
rivers of Babylon they sat down and wept. But they did 
more than weep; they thought much, earnestly, and sadly 
on the past history of their people. In the clear light of 
experience they saw that Israel’s misfortunes had come 
upon her for her sins; for the one grand all-comprehending 
sin of unfaithfulness to Jehovah. Out of this insight sprang 
a purpose of amendment, and a disposition to consider 
carefully the best means for guarding in future against 
the errors which had entailed on the covenant people such 
an inheritance of woe. This penitent, pensive mood may 
have borne fruit in various directions. Possibly one result 
was the compilation of the historical books, in which the 
story of Israel is told from the time of the Judges to the 
destruction of Jerusalem Literary activity is one of the 


1To the period of the exile Professor Ryle refers, among other literary 
labours, the combination of the Deuteronomic law with the book of Joshua, 
and with the Jehovist-Elohist history of Israel’s beginnings. The motives 
of this literary activity he finds in ‘‘ the reverence with which:the pious Jew, 
in his Babylonian exile, would regard the archives that recorded the begin- 
nings of his nation and the foundation of his faith.’ Vide The Canon of 
the Old Testament, p. 69, | 


266 APOLOGETICS, 


consolations of captives, prisoners, and exiles. Bunyan 
wrote the Pilgrim's Progress in Bedford gaol, Spencer’s 
Faery Queen was composed mainly in an Irish wilderness, 
and was thus, as the author tells us, “the fruit of savage 
soil.” With books written under such conditions none can 
compare for sweetness, beauty, and calm, solemn dignity. 
How much of the best Book do we owe to the exiles of 
Babylon: the oracles of Isaiah the second, for example! 
The fact, if it be a fact, has doubtless something to do 
with the exceptional worth of these writings. It is by 
deep sorrow God makes men wise. 

The study of the past history of Israel, with which we 
may conceive the best of the exiles earnestly occupied, 
might very readily suggest that the worship of Jehovah 
wanted regulation. They could see how the old provincial 
sanctuary system, that had been in vogue till the time of 
Josiah’s reformation, opened a wide door to Canaanite 
corruptions. They could see how for want of due pre- 
cautions idolatrous abuses crept into even the temple 
worship. From the whole survey they would get the 
impression that the religious life of their fathers had been 
too free, and that the only effectual way to exclude 
idolatrous practices in future, should God in His mercy 
restore them to their own land, would be to have the 
service of the sanctuary regulated down to the minutest 
particulars, with purity of worship as the guiding principle 
in the process of reconstruction. For the same general 
purpose of shutting out the impure influence of heathenism 
they would perceive the need of a carefully elaborated 
system of rules for securing holiness in the outer conduct, 
that the whole life of Israel might be clean in God’s sight. 
The outcome of the reforming spirit would naturally be a 
body of rules like the priestly code, a very fully developed 
corpus of sacrificial and ceremonial law. 

The promoters of this reforming movement might very 
well have the feeling that they were true to the spirit of 
Moses, and doing their best to preserve intact the Mosaic 


ad 


JUDAISM. 267 


religion. The logic of their position might be thus put: 
One God, one sanctuary, and at the one sanctuary a care- 
fully regulated service offered by a people scrupulously 
guarded against all uncleanness in all relations and actions 
of their lives. They might claim that this was the logic 
of history, each link in the chain of argument being 
established one after the other in Israel’s experience. One 
God, said Moses, “Thou shalt have no other gods before 
me.” Whatever more he said, Israel acted for long as if 
he had said no more. There were many sanctuaries in the 
land, and the worship carried on there was to a large 
extent spontaneous, and too often degraded by imitations of 
vile Canaanitish custom. Then at length it was seen that 
one God demanded one sanctuary, and the Deuteronomic 
law came into force. But even this reform did not secure 
for Israel’s one true God His due honour. Jeremiah had 
to complain of his contemporaries that they burned incense 
unto Baal, and walked after other gods, and made the 
temple a den of robbers;! and Ezekiel, looking back on 
what went on there before the captivity, speaks of the 
defilement of the holy place by the “whoredom”: of 
idolatrous worship, and by its sacred precincts being turned 
into places of sepulture for the kings? Thus men 
zealous for God’s honour were forced on to the final stage 
in the logical process: one uniform, carefully constructed, 
strictly enforced system of worship. And in carrying out 
this programme they might regard themselves as simply put- 
ting the copestone on the work of Moses, and feel entitled 
to invest the new code with the authority of his name. 
This statement helps us to understand how the priestly 
code, assuming it to be in form, and in many of its details, 
a new thing, the product of the reforming zeal of the exiles, 
might reasonably be represented as a faithful following out of 
the principles of Mosaism. And this, it will be remembered, 
is what we here are chiefly concerned with. The question for 
us is not the critical one whether the priestly code be post- 
1 Jer, vii. 11, | 2 Ezek, xiii, 7, 


268 APOLOGETICS, 


exilic, but whether, assuming that it was, we can claim for 
it to be in the intention of its authors, and in its main drift, 
a levsitimate and useful development of Israel’s religion. It 
may, or it may not be, that Ezra the scribe was something 
more than a clerk preparing a clean copy of an old statute- 
book, or even than a servile redactor of ancient unwritten 
usage; an originator, rather than a transmitter, such as 
Confucius modestly claimed to be. It is certainly not 
unnatural to regard Ezra, freshly arrived from Persia, in 
Palestine, with the law of his God in his hand, as an 
epoch - making man, a kind of second Moses, a new 
legislator only assuming the old one’s name. But, be that 
as it may, the main question is, Was the work done by 
Ezra good and wholesome, or the reverse ? 

Now it needs but a hasty and general survey of the 
priestly code to be satisfied that there was much in it that 
tended towards the realisation of the Mosaic ideal of a 
holy people faithful to Jehovah. One outstanding feature 
in it is the prominence given to the idea of sin. This has 
indeed been represented as a fault in the new post-exilic 
system, as compared with the old religion of Israel. In 
the good old times religion, we are told, was a part of 
common life, and an incident of festive occasions. Worship 
and feasting went hand in hand. The sacred times were 
associated with the seasons of the year, which are the 
natural occasions of rejoicing, such as the seasons of the 
wheat harvest and the vintage. The sacrifices had little 
reference to sin, but were of a joyous nature -—“a merry- 
making before Jehovah with music and song, timbrels, 
flutes, and stringed instruments.” How sad that all this 
innocent happiness should pass away and be replaced by 
the “monotonous seriotisness” of Levitical worship! 
Just as sad as that the Sunday sports and the dancing 
round the May-pole of merry old England should be 
replaced by the seriousness of the Puritans. Mirth is 
good, but too much mirth is unsuitable to the world we 

1 Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 81. 


JUDAISM. 269 


live in, and even dangerous to morals. A nation given up 
to mirth is apt to be a nation given up to moral licence. 
So it proved in Israel. And therefore it was well, it was 
a real advance in moral culture, that the religious system 
should be so altered as to develop a deeper consciousness of 
sin. It tended to a more exalted view of the holiness of 
God, and to greater heedfulness in conduct. 

It is not difficult to see that the ceremonial law, not less 
than the sacrificial, tended in the same direction. The 
prescriptions with regard to uncleanness may seem to us 
very irksome, but it is when we look at them in the light 
of pagan Semitic worship that we perceive their beneficent 
purpose. In detail, these prescriptions have much in 
common with the customs of other peoples, like the 
Egyptians and Persians, but in aim they stand alone, and 
in reference to the paganism nearest Israel they have all 
the effect of a studied antagonism. The contrast has been 
well described by Schultz. “The nature-worship of the 
Canaanites draws the divine down into the processes of 
nature, and is implicated with them. The ceremonial law 
will first sanctify and purify these in order to lift them up 
to God. Nature-worship seeks to honour the Godhead by 
unlimited self-surrender to nature with its impulses, 
powers, passions, and motions. Death and procreation are 
for it the secret centres of the religious contemplation of 
nature. The ceremonial law seeks to honour the Creator 
of life as exalted above nature, by devoting to Him all 
that is natural, and by destroying all that is out of 
harmony with the divine.”! In the light of this contrast 
we can understand and sympathise with the laws relating 
to sexual intercourse, the rite of circumcision, the purifi- 
cation of a mother after child-birth, They all tended to 
purity, and to the fostering of a salutary abhorrence of 
the vileness of Baal-worship which made prostitution a 
religious service. 

One other feature of the priestly code may here be 

1 Alttestamentliche Theologie, 4te Aufl. p. 462, 


270 APOLOGETICS, 


briefly adverted to. The centralisation of worship in a 
single sanctuary, and the commitment of the whole sacriti- 
cial service into the hands of a priestly class, if an 
innovation as regards Mosaism, had certainly a tendency 
to prepare men for the religion of the spirit which came in 
with Jesus. In old times, it would appear, killing for 
food and sacrifice were the same thing, and every man was 
his own priest. Sacrifice was a thing of daily occurrence, 
and an essential element of religion. The centralisation of 
worship changed all that. Sacrifice became an affair of 
stated seasons, public sacrifice for all Israel threw into the 
shade private sacrifice, and the offering of victims became 
the business of a professional class. But religion is not 
an affair for two or three seasons in the year, but for daily 
life. Therefore men had to find out for themselves means 
for the culture of piety independent of Levitical ritual. 
The need was felt in exile when the temple worship was 
perforce suspended, and it would continue to be felt when 
the second temple had been built and a new altar erected. 
The synagogue, with its prayers and its reading of the 
Scriptures, met the want, and educated men for a time 
when temple and sacrifice would finally disappear. 

Thus far my aim has been to show that Neo-Mosaism, as 
I have ventered to call the movement initiated by Ezekiel 
and consummated by Ezra, was a thing in which God- 
inspired men might have part. But now, quite compatibly 
with that view, it may be frankly acknowledged that the 
new turn taken by Israel’s religion involved its own peculiar 
risks. The danger was that scrupulous care in the regulation 
of worship and the guarding of life from impurity would 
end in formalism, in that righteousness of the scribes which 
was so mercilessly condemned by Jesus. Freedom had 
ended in moral religious licence. Judaism cured that by 
hedging the people in on every side by positive law, and 
the evil now to be apprehended was that the cure would 
breed a new and worse disease — dead, rotten-hearted 
legalism. It might even be affirmed with a measure of 


JUDAISM. Zhe 


truth that the sinister reign of legalism began the day that 
Ezra appeared on Jewish soil with the law in his hand. 

Yet we have the means of satisfying ourselves that the 
evil latent in the new movement remained an undeveloped 
germ in Ezra’s time and even for a while after. One 
important fact tending to prove this is that men of pro- 
phetic spirit were in sympathy with Ezra’s work; Ezekiel 
for example. In the writings of this prophet, the char- 
acteristic mark of the new departure—the mixing of morality 
with ritual, righteousness with technical holiness, as if they 
were on the same level—is everywhere apparent. So, for 
instance, in his description of the just man in the discourse 
in which he controverts the proverb concerning the fathers 
eating sour grapes and the children’s teeth set on edge. 
Acts of very different quality and value are all classed 
together there as if of the same importance. This is 
certainly a descent from the high level of prophetic teaching, 
or even of Mosaism. But that is a criticism of Judaism 
which has to be made once for all. The thing to be noted 
here is that there is not the slightest trace in Ezekiel’s 
prophecies of the common tendency of ritualism to under- 
mine the ethical, and to weaken or pervert the moral 
sentiments. He hates oppression and inhumanity and 
greed as vigorously as Amos or Isaiah. 

Similar remarks apply to the great prophet of the exile. 
There are indications here and there in the later part of the 
book of Isaiah that the writer was not uninfluenced by the 
spirit of Judaism, as in the manner in which the observance 
of the Sabbath is spoken of, and the eating of swine’s 
flesh condemned. But with this leaning to the positive in 
religion there is combined a most refreshing sense of the 
supreme importance of the great principles of morality, and 
a withering contempt for religious service divorced from 
right conduct. Is it, asks the prophet indignantly, “Is it 
such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict 
his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to 

1 Ezek. xviii. 2 Isa. lvi. 4; lviii. 13. 3 Isa. Ixy. 4; lxvi. 17, 


272 APOLOGETICS. 


spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call 
this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is not 
this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of 
wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the 
oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not 
to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the 
poor that are cast out to thy house ? when thou seest the 
naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself 
from thine own flesh?”* We feel that this teaching is in 
thorough sympathy with the prophetic passion for righteous- 
ness, and anticipates the doctrine of the Sermon on the 
Mount. 

But the amplest evidence that Judaism in at least its 
earlier stage was of wholesome moral tendency, and knew 
how to keep ritual in its own place, as only a means, 
however important, to a higher end, is supplied in the 
Psalter, which recent criticism with increasing confidence 
regards as, in its contents, mainly of post-exilic origin, and, 
in its use, the song-book of the second temple. There is 
no conceivable ground for being jealous of this conclusion, 
though somehow, owing to the influence probably of the 
old traditional opinion, there is a lurking inclination in 
one’s mind to regard all attempts to assign to any of the 
psalms late dates as a dangerous heresy. Slowly, however, 
it begins to dawn on us that in this case criticism, like a 
wise physician, heals itself. Critics tell us that the priestly 
‘code is post-exilic, and we are apt to see in it, so viewed, 
simply a religious declension in which the God of Moses 
and the prophets could have no part. But the other doctrine 
of the critics concerning the post-exilic origin of the Psalter 
comes in as the needful antidote to this sceptical mood. 
For if the Psalter be indeed of post-exilic origin, then it is 
certain that Judaism, or scribism if you will, in the earlier 
stage at least, cannot have been wholly the evil thing we 
thought it. It was not such as to drive the spirit of inspira- 
tion away from Israel. Prophecy after all did not quite 

1 Isa, lviii. 5-7, 


JUDAISM. 273 


cease with Malachi. If, as the critics think, not a few 
psalms, such as the 30th, and the group 113th to 118th, 
also the group 145th to 150th, belong to the Maccabean 
time, then the light of inspiration lingered in Israel for 
some three centuries after Ezra appeared in Jerusalem with 
the law in his hand. Why should we hesitate to believe 
this? Should we not rather be thankful to know that God 
did not altogether forsake His people during the dreary 
winter night of legalism, but gave them the twinkling 
starlight of sacred poetry to keep them in good heart ? 

Those songs of the night are not only very beautiful and 
charming as poetry, but highly spiritual. Though contain- 
ing no new ideas in advance of the prophets, they rise to- 
the highest water-mark of prophetic religion, They show 
that the prophetic religion flowed on and kept the land 
from becoming a wilderness under the arid influence of the 
scribes. Perhaps we ought to say: they show that that 
influence was not so arid as we are apt to imagine. For 
they express unfeigned delight in the temple and its 
services and sacred seasons, and not less in the law 
wherein psalmists found not merely ceremonial rules, but 
great principles of wisdom.2 The true source of the delight 
is that God is there, and that the law and the religious 
ordinances are the means of a blessed communion between 
God and the soul, And this communion psalmists know 
how to maintain apart from the temple and its cultus, 
while keenly missing the privileges connected therewith, 
Witness the contrition for sin expressed ex hypothesi by a 
psalmist of the exile? the hope in God of another. psalmist 
far removed from the house of God, the joy in God 
as a sun and shield, and as the source of all good, of 
a third, who envies the birds that flit about the temple 
precincts. 

The psalms are not only eminently devotional, but 
humane. Not a few of them, such as the 67th, the 87th, 
Ps, v., xxvii, xlii., lxxxiy., cxxii, 2 Ps, xix., cxix, 

P Pat. * Ps, xiii. ® Ps, Ixxxiy, 
S 


A274 APOLOGETICS. 


and the 100th, breathe the spirit of universalism. They 
are in sympathy with the great word of the last of the 
prophets, which, like the cuckoo note, is the harbinger of 
the summer of the Christian era: “From the rising of the 
sun even unto the going down of the same my name is 
great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense is 
offered unto my name, and a pure meat offering.”1 Such 
psalms may be regarded as a counterbalance to the possibly 
necessary but somewhat repulsive severity of the policy 
pursued by Ezra and Nehemiah towards foreigners in 
insisting on separation from heathen wives, and in refusing 
to the Samaritans a share in the work of rebuilding the 
walls of Jerusalem. Other psalms, it must be admitted, 
seem to be animated by the same exclusive spirit—the 
vindictive psalms we call them, which, viewed as the 
utterances of a private individual, present a hard problem 
to the Christian mind. What, we are apt to ask, can the 
Spirit of God have to do with a prayer like this: “ Let them 
be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul: 
let them be turned back and brought to confusion that 
devise my hurt. Let them be as chaff before the wind: 
and let the angel of the Lord chase them”?? Probably the 
true view to take of these psalms is to regard the writer as 
personating the chosen people, and as complaining of wrongs 
done to her by pagan oppressors.® It must be acknow- 
ledged that the tone of such psalms, even when so viewed, 
stands in marked contrast to the spirit of Deutero-Isaiah 
when he represents the servant of Jehovah as a light to 
the Gentiles. It is one of the dark shadows cast on the 
sacred page by the legal dispensation. 

Another of these shadows may, perhaps, be found in 
certain psalms which complain of disaster coming upon 
Israel, notwithstanding her innocence of all unfaithfulness 
to God. “All this is come upon us; yet have we not 


. Mal. i. 11. 2 Ps, xxxyv. 4, 5. 
3 So Professor Robertson Smith in article on ‘‘ Psalms” in Hncyclopedia 
Britannica. 


JUDAISM. 275 
forgotten Thee.”? Such national self- consciousness of 
rectitude seems more in keeping with the spirit of the 
scribes than with that of the prophets, and may plausibly 
be viewed as a forerunner of Pharisaism. But the inference, 
though natural, is not certain. In such psalms as the 49th 
and 73rd we meet with the same problem in reference to 
individual life. Psalmists conscious of moral integrity 
complain of suffering at the hands of evil men, and want 
to know what it all means. But prophets like Jeremiah, 
whom we do not suspect of self-righteousness, do the same 
thing. And we should regard it as one of the merits uf 
these prophets, and of the author of the book of Job, that 
rising superior to all spurious humility they have the courage 
to propound the question, Why do righteous men suffer? 
Demure piety, sophisticated in its moral sentiments by an 
artificial and abstract theology, would be apt to say: No 
such case can happen, for there is none righteous; all who 
suffer, suffer for their sins. Such abject self-condemnation 
is much more akin to Pharisaism than the manly yet 
modest self-approval of a Jeremiah or a Job. Butif a 
prophet might without morbid egotism pass a favourable 
judgment upon himself, surely a psalmist might with still 
less risk of Pharisaic complacency form a favourable 
estimate of the moral and religious condition of his fellow- 
countrymen, and say: On the whole they have been in the 
right path, yet behold how they suffer !? 

The foregoing considerations may suffice to convince us 
that Judaism, whatever its defects and tendencies, was a 
legitimate phase of the religion of revelation. It remains 
to inquire how far the transposition of the law zs, it lies 
before us in the Pentateuch, from the time of Mosc to the 
time of Ezra, affects New Testament verdicts on ‘he legal 
economy. ‘These are that the law was subordii«te to the 
promise, and came in after it to prepare nvn for the 
reception of the promise; and that it was a failure as a 


1 Ps, xliv.; vide also Ps. lxxiv. 
2 On the defects of Old Testament piety vide chap. x. o! this Book, 


276 APOLOGETICS. 


means of attaining righteousness and acceptance with God, 
not merely on account of man’s sin, as Paul taught, but on 
account of its intrinsic weakness and unprofitableness, its 
sacrificial system being totally unfit to deal effectually with 
human guilt and to bring men near to God,—the doctrine 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Being a demonstrated 
failure, the old legal covenant, it was held, must pass away, 
and give place to the new covenant prophesied of by 
Jeremiah. These peremptory judgments were pronounced 
by the inspired teachers of the Christian faith on the 
traditional understanding that the whole law of the Penta- 
teuch was Mosaic. It is only when we keep in view this 
fact that we can fully appreciate the moral courage required 
to assert these positions in presence of an idolatrous rever- 
ence for religious customs believed to be of very ancient 
and divine origin. Had the apostles shared modern critical 
views they might have taken their stand on the late and 
human origin of the system, and said: Leviticalism is not 
of Moses or of God; it is the work of Ezra and other 
unknown priests in Babylon, therefore it has no great 
claims on our respect. A much easier thing to say than: 
it is of Moses and of God, nevertheless it has been proved 
to be worthless except as a means of preparing men for 
something better, therefore it must pass away. 

The supposed late origin of the Levitical law as a written 
code does not in the least detract from the validity of these 
New Testament verdicts, but rather strengthens it. If they 
hold good as against a law emanating from Moses, & fortiori 
they hold good against a law which came into force nearly 
a millennium later, and at the Christian era might still be 
regarded as a comparative upstart. The important principle 
enunciated by Paul, that the law was subordinate to the 
promise and came in after it, and between it and the 
promise, obviously holds on the critical hypothesis. It 
receives under that hypothesis a double exemplification. 
The Mosaic legislation came in after the call of Abraham, 
and the Levitical legislation came in after the promise of a 


“-@ 


ae 


JUDAISM. Zr 


new covenant with its law written on the heart. And 
there were two experiments to be made. One was to try 
whether a model state could not be built up on the founda- 
tion of the Decalogue. That experiment went on till the 
time of Jeremiah, when it had become clear to his prophetic 
eye that it had ended in failure. On the footing of a law 
written on stone-tablets a righteous nation he saw was not 
to be looked for; what was wanted was a law written on 
the heart. But this was not to come all at once. Jere- 
miah was six centuries in advance of his time. Men were 
not going to accept his conclusion without a convincing 
_ proof that there was no other way of it. And so the 
exiles returned from Babylon not with a simple spiritual 
law written on their hearts, but with an elaborate sacrificial 
and ceremonial law written in a book. Ezra appears with 
the priestly code in his hand, the fruit of much toil carried 
on through years spent in compiling, redacting, editing, 
and supplementing the Torah relating to worship and 
kindred matters. On the basis of that Torah a new 
experiment was to be made. The first experiment aimed 
at a righteous nation, the second at a holy Church. The 
second experiment was a more ghastly failure than even 
the first. The result was Rabbinism and Pharisaism: a 
people technically and outwardly holy, really and inwardly 
altogether unholy. By a prophet that might have been 
foreseen from the first. But the foresight of the wise does 
not render superfluous the age-long experiments whereby 
truth is made patent to all the world. Rabbinism had to 
be evolved before men could perceive the full significance 
of Jeremiah’s oracle of the law written on the heart. 

This breaking up of the one experiment into two, far 
from making the apologetic problem of the justification of 
God’s way in the ages of preparation harder, seems rather 
to simplify it. If the whole Pentateuchal law was Mosaic, 
in the sense not merely of being as old as Moses, but of 
being God’s word to Israel through Moses, then Jeremiah’s 
verdict on the Sinaitic covenant must be held to have been 


278 APOLOGETICS. 


pronounced in view of a completed historical experiment of 
what the law in all its parts was worth. There was in 
that case no room or need for a new experiment. The new 
covenant was due, and should have come forthwith. But 
in what light, then, are we to regard the four or five 
centuries of Israel’s history between Ezra and Christ ? 
How are we to take them up into the unity of the divine 
plan? They seem left out in the cold, a godless unintel- 
ligible tract of time, having no perceptible connection with 
the history of revelation. Take it, on the other hand, that 
Jeremiah’s verdict is pronounced in view of a legal pro- 
gramme in which the priestly code had no part, as a 
divinely appointed system, then all becomes plain. The 
past history of Israel had shown that on the basis of 
Mosaism it was impossible to construct a really righteous 
nation. But a new experiment remained to be made. It 
had to be shown that it was equally impossible by means 
of an elaborate ritual to produce a holy ecclesia. The 
originators of the new experiment could start on their 
career with heart and hope just because it was new, some- 
thing hitherto untried, Till their hope had been demon- 
strated to be vain, the new era of grace could not come, 


CHAPTER VIIL 
THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM. 


Lrrexature.—Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Band iv.; 
Kuenen, Zhe Religion of Israel ; Robertson Smith, The Old 
Testament in the Jewish Church (2nd edition); Wellhausen, 
Die Pharistéer und die Sadducder ; Montet, Essai sur les 
Origines des Partes Sadducéen et Pharisien ; Schiirer, Ges- 
chichte des Jiidischen Volkes (translated by T. & T. Clark); 
Drummond, Philo Judaeus; Sack, Die Altjudische Religion, 
im Uebergange vom Bibelthume zum Talmudismus ; Thomson, 
On the Books which Influenced our Lord (Apocalyptic Litera- 
ture); Cheyne, Bampton Lectures on the Psalter (Lecture vil. 


\ =e 


THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM. 279 


on the Influence of the Persian Religion on Judaism) ; Toy, 
Judaism and Christianity. 


I use this title to describe the state of religion among 
the Jewish people during the long period of above four 
hundred years which elapsed between the time of the 
prophet Malachi and the beginning of the Christian era, 

The name is in every respect appropriate; even in 
regard to the comparative scantiness of available informa- 
tion, The remark applies especially to the first division of 
the period, that during which the Jews were under the 
dominion of the Persians. Of this time, covering nearly a 
century, we know next to nothing. The one event con- 
nected with it of interest to the Bible student is the 
production of the books of Chronicles, which probably took 
place towards the close of the Persian period." This work, 
in which the books of Hzra and Nehemiah seem to have 
been originally incorporated, affords an interesting glimpse 
into the way in which pious Jews at the time when it was 
written regarded the past history of their nation. It is, 
properly speaking, not a history of Israel, but of Jerusalem, 
or of the religion of Jerusalem; giving first a hasty sketch 
of ancient history to the time of David, who made Jeru- 
salem the capital of the nation; then the history of the 
city under David and his successors till the Babylonish 
captivity ; then in Hzra and Nehemiah the history of new 
Jerusalem; the whole regarded from the Levitical point 
of view.” 

The period now to be considered was deprived of the 
light of prophecy. With Malachi the sun of Hebrew 
prophecy set, not to rise again till John the Baptist 
appeared. Psalmists living in that dark time uttered the 
complaint: “There is no more any prophet.” Psalmists 
were indeed the only thing approaching to prophets forth- 


1 Ewald thinks it may have been written about the time of the death of 
Alexander the Great, which occurred in 323 B.c. Vide his Geschichte dea 
Volkes Israel, i, 251. , 

3 So Ewald, Geschichte, i. 251, 3 Ps, lxxiv, 9, 


280 APOLOGETICS. 


coming in those years. Their sacred odes were the glitter- 
ing starlight of the long winter night. What a calamity 
this disappearance of prophetic inspiration to a people that 
had once listened to the oracles of an Isaiah and a Jere- 
miah! It was all the greater a calamity if the later 
generations did not know how much they had lost. This 
appears to have been the actual fact. The age of the hier- 
ocracy, when priests and scribes bore rule, not only failed 
to produce new prophets, but became incapable of appre- 
ciating the old ones. Speaking broadly, the great prophets 
were neglected during the night of legalism. Their 
prophecies were indeed collected for preservation and 
assigned a place among the sacred writings. But that 
place was second, not first. The law alone was emphatically 
Scripture; all else was of secondary moment. The spirit of 
the age even in Palestine was out of sympathy with 
prophetism, and for Alexandrian Judaism it had almost no 
meaning.” 

Why did no prophets appear in those centuries? Was 
it merely an unhappy chance, or was it a divine judgment ? 
It was neither; it was rather the result to be expected at 
the stage at which the development of Israel’s religion had 
arrived. There was nothing more to be said on Old Testa- 
ment lines. The next thing to be said was the word 
spoken by Jesus to the woman of Samaria, that local, 
national, and ritual worship must cease, and give place to 
a universal worship of the spirit. But the hour for saying 
that had not yet come. Prophets do not speak till they 
must. They do not arise till they are sorely needed, and 
then they come and give voice to the burden that is on the 
heart of all like minded with themselves. Such a crisis 
could only come after legalism had had full time to bear 
its proper fruit. At first, like monasticism in the Christian 
Church, it appeared altogether a good thing, and commended 
itself to the general religious consciousness. Psalmists 
longed for the return of the sacred seasons, and were glad 

? Vide Riehm, Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 408. 


ES 


THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM. 281 


when these came round and summoned them to go up to 
the house of Jehovah.! They sang the praises of the law, 
declaring that it was perfect, converting the soul and giving 
wisdom to the simple. The Chronicler was heart aud soul 
interested in the temple service. He delighted especially 
in the temple music, and lost no opportunity of referring 
to it in his narrative. He took pains to give the Levites 
all due honour. He so discharged the office of historian 
that in his pages the Levitical law seems to be in full force 
even in the old times of David and Solomon. Obvionsly 
the time for pronouncing the law weak and unprofitable, 
and the Levitical religion incapable of perfecting the 
worshipper as to conscience, is not yet come. The priests 
and the scribes are in the ascendant, and must do their best 
and their worst. 

The scribes had very varied and apparently very useful 
work todo. One task obviously lying to their hand was 
that of multiplying copies of the book of the law which 
Ezra, the father of their order, had written out in Babylon 
and brought with him to Jerusalem. The transcription, 
collection, and editing of other valuable writings, such as 
those containing the oracles of the prophets, may be 
regarded as a natural and probable extension of their work. 
In the book of Nehemiah reference is made to the prophets 
in terms which very fully acknowledge their importance as 
God’s messengers to testify against the sin of Israel and 
which may be assumed to imply acquaintance with their 
writings. In the second book of Maccabees, indeed, Nehe- 
miah himself is credited with the founding of a library in 
which the prophetic writings were included. There is 
nothing improbable in the statement; neither is it im- 
probable that the Levites, into whose mouth the prayer 
containing the reference to the prophets in the book of 


1 Ps. exxii. a as, Xie, 3 Neh. ix. 30. 

‘ Chap. ii. 18. The statement is that Nehemiah ‘‘ founded a library and 
collected the (books) concerning the kings and prophets, and the (books) 
of David and letters of kings about sacred gifts.” 


282 APOLOGETICS. 


Nehemiah is put, and the scribes, whose chief interest and 
occupation was about the law, set sufficient value on the 
utterances of the prophets to desire their preservation, and 
to take some trouble for that purpose. And so we may 
legitimately conceive of the guild of the scribes as not 
only copyists and editors of the law, but also as 
collectors and editors of books of religious value, deemed 
sacred, though by no means put on a level with the 
Pentateuch. 

Another very necessary department of scribe-work was the 
interpretation of the law. The law of the Lord might, as the 
Psalmist said, be perfect, but it is not easy to construct a code 
of rules, however numerous and exactly expressed, that shall 
be so complete, unambiguous, and self-consistent throughout, 
as to make further legislation unnecessary and commentary 
superfluous. The law of the Pentateuch was certainly not 
of that character. It contained bodies of law, apparently 
of different ages, difficult to reconcile with each other, and 
though when added together the rules of conduct in all 
departments of life were multitudinous, they still proved to 
be insufficient for men’s guidance in all particular instances. 
There was urgent need either for new legislation or for 
dexterous interpretation. The scribes did not dare to 
assume openly the réle of legislators: they adopted the 
safer line of the interpreter, and manufactured new laws 
under cover of explaining the old. Hence arose the oral 
law, for which not less than for the written law Mosaic 
origin and authority was claimed. It was a thing of evil 
omen, destined to grow to portentous dimensions, and to 
bear pernicious fruit. And yet it could plead utility, not 
to say necessity. What was the oral law but a hedge to the 
written law, a means of» protecting it from the possibility 
of transgression?* This business of hedging once begun 


1 In the Pirke-Aboth the men of the Great Synagogue are reported to have 
said three things : Be deliberate in judgment ; raise up many disciples ; make 
a hedge around the law. These sayings indicate the aim and spirit of 
scribism. 


THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM. 283 


was a serious affair. The law itself, as reconstructed by 
Ezra, was a hedge to the religion of Israel, as a people in 
covenant with God. And now in turn it was discovered 
that it too needed a hedge. And the second hedge 
needed a third, and the third a fourth, and so on ad 
minitwm, till there was nothing but a vast expanse of 
hedges, and the thing for which all the hedging had 
taken place, the true worship and service of God, had 
somehow disappeared. The immense development of con- 
centric hedge-work found its historic monument in the 
Talmud, that vast pyramid in which Judaism lies entombed. 
It was that pyramid the scribes, without knowing it, 
were busy building, stone upon stone, during the night of 
legalism, 

There is reason to believe that while under Persian 
dominion the Jews came under Persian influence to some 
extent in their religion. This was a thing likely to 
happen. For the Persians, besides being a friendly people, 
had a kindred religion. Their idea of God was similar 
to that of the Hebrew prophets. They thought of the 
Supreme Being as one to whom moral distinctions were 
real and vital, who loved righteousness and hated unright- 
eousness. This ethically-conceived deity, called Ahura- 
Mazda, was for them the one true God. They did indeed 
set over against the good and wise Spirit another spirit, 
whom they called Angra-Mainyu, the evil-minded, on which 
account it has been customary to represent the ancient 
Persians as believers in a dualism rather than as mono- 
theists. But the Persian dualism was involuntary. The 
prominence given in the Zend religion to the evil spirit, 
source and maker of all evil things in the world, was the 
result and proof of its earnest ethicalism. The Zoroas- 
trians were so bent on maintaining the holiness and good- 
ness of God, that to save these from being compromised 
they were willing to sacrifice or imperil His sovereignty by 
setting beside Him a rival deity, a sort of anti-god who 
should be held responsible for all the evil that was in the 


284 APOLOGETICS. 


universe.” They held it to be the duty of every man to 
love and serve the good Spirit, and to hate the evil spirit | 
and all his works. Between the two spirits and the king- 
doms of light and darkness over which they preside there 
is an incessant war, and all men must choose on which side 
they are to be; and well for the man who chooses the 
kingdom of Ahura-Mazda and his righteousness, and strives 
to advance it by purity, truth, culture of the soil, and the 
practice of family duties, and who fights against Angra- 
Mainyu, hating lies, deceit, adultery, murder, killing noxious 
beasts, and carefully preserving the lives of all useful 
animals, 

From a religion like this, with an exalted idea of God, 
and a noble ideal of human life, the Jewish people would 
not feel it necessary to hold aloof, as they had been com- 
pelled to hold aloof from the religion of their Canaanite 
neighbours, that they might escape moral contamination. 
They might even be not unwilling to learn some lessons in 
religion from their Persian masters. The subjects in which 
they may be supposed to have received instruction are 
chiefly these :. ceremonial rules of purification, Satan, angels, 
and the resurrection of the dead. Now that there is a 
striking resemblance in these respects, as in their respec- 
tive ideas of God, between the religions of the two peoples, 
there can be no doubt. In the Persian, as in the Levitical 
religion, uncleanness, arising from contact with the work 
of the evil spirit, such as death, and the means of removing 
it, occupy a prominent place. The Hebrew Satan answers 
to the Persian Angra-Mainyu. The Zend religion is rich in 
spirits good and evil. The Zend-Avesta swarms with spirits 
of every description, with uncouth names and diverse func- 
tions: Yatus, Pairika, Druants, wizard spirits, spirits of 
the air, storm fiends—evil spirits all; and Yazatas and 
Fravashis, tutelary spirits for the days of the month and 


1 Darmesteter says that in the Indo-Iranian religion there was ‘‘a latent 
monotheism and an unconscious dualism.” Translation of the Zend-Avesta, 
Sacred Books of the Hast, vol. iv., Introduction, p. lvii. 


THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM. 285 


for particular clans and neighbourhoods, and, highest of all, 
the Amesha Spentas, the seven “undying and well-doing 
ones.” And it is noticeable that in the later books of the 
Old Testament, as in Zachariah and Daniel, angelic beings 
are more prominent than in the older books, Finally, the 
doctrine of the resurrection is common to the two religions, 
and the fact is all the more remarkable that it is only in 
those books of the Bible which critics believe to have been 
written in the Persian period, or still later, that the doctrine 
makes its appearance. 

Is this correspondence due to borrowing? It is a ques- 
tion to be discussed without prejudice, and yet to be 
answered with caution, We have no cause to be jealous 
of the influence of surrounding peoples on the religious 
opinions of the Jews. It is a mere question of fact. On 
the other hand, it must be carefully borne in mind that 
mere resemblance does not prove conscious imitation or 
borrowing on either side. Common features may be “ de- 
velopmental coincidences”* in religions of kindred nature. 
It is natural that an earnestly ethical religion which sees 
in the whole history of the world a struggle between good 
and evil should in the course of its historical development 
evolve a doctrine of resurrection and eternal judgment. In 
the same way Angra-Mainyu and Satan may be a case of 
levelopmental coincidence. Every kingdom has a head; 
what more natural than that a religion which sees in the 
world a struggle between two kingdoms of light and dark- 
ness should provide for the latter kingdom as well as for 
the former a head, without needing to go to a foreign 
religion in quest of one? The resemblance between Satan 
and Angra-Mainyu is not the thing to be accounted for, but 
rather their difference ; this, viz. that Satan and his kingdom 
are not independent as are Angra-Mainyu and his kingdom. 

Yet withal there appear to be distinct traces of Persian 


* This most suggestive expression is borrowed from Principal Fairbairn of 
Mansfield College, Oxford. Vide his Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 
and of History, p. 23. 


. 286 APOLOGETICS, 


influence on Jewish religious opinion, at least in the depart- 
ment of angelology. The very names of spirits which figure 
in the later Jewish books are suggestive of this, as, ¢.g., Asmo- 
deus in the book of Tobit, which is simply aeshma daeva 
done into Greek. And it is not difficult to see how it 
came about that the Jews were ready to welcome Persian 
ideas on this subject. These fitted into the tendency of 
later Judaism to a transcendent conception of God. That 
tendency revealed itself from the first in Levitical worship, 
as reshaped by Ezra. The God of the Levitical cultus is a 
far-off God. He keeps Himself aloof from sinful men in 
jealous guardianship of His holiness. He confines Himself 
to a most holy place into which no one but the high priest 
may enter, and he only once a year, and with careful 
precautions, while ordinary mortals stand without waiting 
the result of sacerdotal mediation. Aloofness from the 
world is but an extension of this idea of a far-off God, and 
angelic mediation between the Divine Being and the crea- 
tion is parallel to high priestly mediation between the Holy 
One and sinful Israelites. In this connection the altered 
version of the numbering of the people by David in the 
book of Chronicles is very significant." In the book of 
Samuel it is Jehovah that tempts David ;? in Chronicles it 
is Satan® The change does not prove that Satan is an 
importation from Persia, or even that the person responsible 
for the change, whether the Chronicler or the unknown 
author of a source used by him, was consciously influenced 
by Persian ways of thinking regarding God’s relation to 
men’s sin. But it does prove that at the time when the 
book of Chronicles was compiled, Jewish ideas concerning 
God had undergone important modification. It was then 
felt to be unseemly to bring the Divine Being into so close 
contact with man’s misconduct, and the readiest solution 
was to assign the function of the tempter to Satan, as an 
intermediary between Jehovah and David. It is a solution 
which may not satisfy us, but it is at least interesting as 

12 Sam. xxiv.; 1 Chron. xxi. 22 Sam. xxiv. 11. $1 Chron. xxi. li 


THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM. 287 


supplying unmistakable evidence of the existence of the 
tendency above referred to as opening a door through 
which Persian beliefs about the spirit-world might find 
entrance into the Jewish mind. The God of Judaism, the 
Chronicler being witness, is a transcendent Deity, exalted 
by His holiness far above human sin, presumably exalted 
also in His essential being above the creation; incapable of 
having anything to do with the world except through 
mediators human or angelic. A tendency like this, once it 
sets in, goes on till it reaches its natural limit. By and 
by it will be deemed improper even to pronounce God’s 
name as it had once been current in Israel, and held a 
mark of piety to call Him Elohim or Adonai rather than 
Jehovah. Even in Ecclesiastes, probably of later origin 
than Chronicles, this habit appears to have been begun. 
The name Jehovah does not once occur in that book, and 
consistently with this fact God is spoken of as “ He that is 
higher,” and set in contrast to men by the formula, 
“God is in heaven, and thou upon earth.”2 In Philo the 
new way of thought culminates in a conception of God as 
the unknowable and inexpressible, incapable of relations 
with the universe, except through angels and Powers, and 
logot and the Logos, semipersonal beings who flit through 
the dim world like owls in the night 

Thus far we have had no occasion to think of the Jews 
in the period now under review otherwise than as a united 
people striving with one mind and heart to make God’s 
law the rule of their lives. It is a rare community that 
knows no divisions in religion, The Christian Church has 


' Eccles. v. 8. 2 Eccles. v. 2. 

* In the above paragraphs I may appear to treat the question of Persian 
influence unsympathetically, but I do not wish to be understood as restrict- 
ing that influence to the one point of angels, or regarding it as on the whole 
sinister. Iam quite open to the view advocated enthusiastically by Cheyne 
in his Bampton Lectures on the Psalter in these words: ‘‘If Talmudic 
eschatology borrowed something from the less noble parts of the Persian 
religion, must not the psalmists, with their finer spiritual tact, have wel- 
comed the help of its nobler teaching? Yes, surely, The earlier revelation 


288 APOLOGETICS. 


had ample and sorrowful experience of strife and separation 
caused by diversity of opinion and practice. The post- 
exilian Jewish Church was not wholly exempt from similar 
evils. The existence of serious cleavage became apparent 
during the period of the Greek dominion, when the Pharisees 
and the Sadducees came upon the scene as rival parties in 
religious and political affairs. The origin of these parties 
and of their names is involved in obscurity ; for it is night, 
with only moonlight at the best, in which all objects are 
seen but dimly. Practically, it was a cleavage between 
the scribes and the priests; and when we consider the 
occupations of these two classes, their respective spheres of 
influence, and the tendencies naturally arising out of these, 
we can imagine how, long before it came to an open 
rupture, they fell away from each other in opinion, feeling, 
and interest. The priest was the performer of routine 
religious rites, the scribe was a student and teacher of the 
law. The sphere of the priest’s activity was the temple, 
that of the scribe’s was the synagogue. Hence arose a 
difference in point of popularity; the priest met the people 
on rare occasions, when they came up to Jerusalem at the 
seasons of the great feasts; the scribe met them every week 
on Sabbath days, when they assembled to offer prayer and 
hear the Scriptures read. To this must be added that the 
priests were rulers as well as religious officials. The high 
priest was the prince of the community, holding in his hands 
the reins of power. Hence crept into priestly families and 
circles aristocratic feeling, and a more or less secular spirit. 
The scribes, on the other hand, became not less naturally 
the representatives of democratic and religious tendencies. 


to Iranian thinkers of these high spiritual truths, the universal Lordship of 
God, and His never-ending relation to the individual, must have had some 
providential object beyond itself. And I think that we can now see what 
that object was. The appointed time for the blending of the Aryan and 
Semitic mind, which was to occupy so many centuries, had come,” p. 401. 
Renan has little faith in the Persian influence. He says the Jewin Babylon 
went about with his eyes shut and learned nothing.—Histoire du Peuple 
@ Israel, iii, 440. 


THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM. 289 


By this contrast others are explained. The aristocratic 
temper is conservative in matters of opinion. Hence we 
are not surprised to learn that the Sadducees, who were the 
outgrowth of priestly tendencies, held on to the written 
Jaw, and kept aloof from the oral law and the novelties of 
the schools, and further that they shut their minds to the 
new dogmas concerning angels and the resurrection. On 
this side the priests might claim to be, in comparison with 
the scribes, the party of old orthodoxy adhering closely to 
the ways of the fathers. But, on another side, they were 
likely to appear to less advantage. Their secularity, arising 
out of the exercise of government, would incline them to 
follow foreign customs when it seemed advisable in the 
interest of the state. This accordingly was what happened 
under the Greek dominion. The priests were the leaders 
in the process of Hellenisation, while the scribes were the 
champions of Jewish law and custom.! 

It was inevitable that the latent tendencies of the two 
parties should come to the surface under Greek rule. The 
ruler was near at hand, not far away as in the case of the 
preceding Persian dominion. The Greek was in the land, 
dwelling in newly-founded cities bearing Greek names, 
enjoying Greek government, and fostering within them 
Greek customs, And Greek social life was an ageressive, 
infectious thing, appealing to the senses, attractive and 
fascinating to all lovers of pleasure. Greek culture, too, 
was bright, rich, and beautiful, standing in brilliant contrast 
to the poverty of the Semitic world in all that belonged to 
art, science, and philosophy. Here was a situation to which 
the Jewish people could not remain indifferent. They 
must make up their minds either to surrender to the new 
Western influence, or to harden themselves against it. Some 
took the one course, some the other; some Hellenised, some 
stood loyally by old Hebrew ways. In their philo-Greek 
enthusiasm men got their names translated from Hebrew 

? On this whole subject Wellhausen’s Essay, Die Pharisder und die Sad- 
ducder, is specially instructive. 
T 


290 APOLOGETICS. 


into Greek, and did their best to obliterate the physical 
sign of their connection with the Jewish race. They sacri- 
ficed to idols, profaned the Sabbath, and were not content 
till they had obtained permission from the government to 
found a gymnasium in Jerusalem. And in this wild, god- 
less movement of apostacy the priests, to their shame, were 
the ringleaders. 

Then came a turn in the tide through the madness of 
Antiochus Epiphanes. Perceiving how willing many of 
the Jews, including some of the most influential men of 
the nation, were to become Greeks, he was misled into 
thinking that the whole people were prepared for the 
wholesale obliteration of everything distinctively Jewish. 
Orders were issued accordingly, the execution of which 
created a great reaction. It turned out that not only the 
scribes and multitudes of the people, but not a few among 
the priests, were prepared to resist the process of de- 
nationalisation to the death. The hero of the patriotic 
revolt was Judas Maccabeeus, and the result the triumph of 
the faithful in Israel over their pagan foes. The war 
ended, the union brought about by the dire crisis between: 
priests and scribes also came to an end. Each party once 
more followed its proper bent. Sadducees and Pharisees 
struggled for ascendency, fighting with each other not less 
violently than they had fought together against the common 
enemy. Neither could claim to be a worthy representa- 
tive of the religion of Israel. Ambition played a large 
place among the ruling motives of their conduct. More or 
less corrupt in spirit to begin with, they produced in each 
other, by their party antagonism, ever-increasing moral 
deterioration; till at length, a century and a half after the 
time of Antiochus Epiphanes, they had become what we 
see them in the Gospels: utterly opposed to each other in 
belief and policy, yet alike ungodly in spirit, and entire 
aliens from that divine kingdom whose advent Jesus 
proclaimed. 

In the judgment of many modern critics, the time of 


THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM. 291 


trouble, which gave to the Jewish people a hero in the 
person of Judas Maccabzus, also enriched their sacred 
literature by the addition to it of the book of Daniel. If 
this view be correct, then that book is of the apocalyptic 
type; that is to say, it presents what is really history 
under the form of prophecy uttered by a personage of 
great name, who lived long before the actual author’s time. 
As such, it belongs to a class of literature much inferior 
to the collection of oracles uttered by the great prophets, 
who ever spoke in their own name what God had revealed 
to their own spirit. But it is a great book, worthy of a 
place in the Hebrew canon, well fitted to serve the imme- 
diate object of nerving a persecuted people to heroic 
endurance, and memorable and valuable for all time as 
the first attempt to grasp the history of the world as one 
great whole, “as a drama which moves onward at the will 
of the Eternal One.”! It is the brightest light of the 
night of legalism, greatly superior in value, if one may 
make comparisons between canonical books, to two other 
late additions to the sacred collection, Ecclesiastes and 
Esther ; the former of which rather serves to show how 
deep the darkness was growing than to throw any light on 
the problems of life, while the latter, as a literary reflection 
of a Judaism of the narrowest type, seems to lie on the 
outermost fringe of what rightfully belongs to the category 
of the canonical, And as for the other apocalyptic books 
that were kept out of the canon, they are not worthy to be 
mentioned alongside of Daniel. They are, it has been 
truly observed, “in the unfavourable sense of the word, 
works of art; they smell of the lamp; it is no living, 
animated conviction that speaks in them, and therefore 
they are altogether unfit to arouse enthusiasm.”2 When 
or by whom they were written is unknown; it has been 
suggested that they proceeded from the fraternity of ascetics 
that lived in retirement from the world by the shores of 


1 Kuenen, The Religion of Israel, iii. 111, 
2 Ibid, iii, 114, 


292 APOLOGETICS, 


the Dead Sea, known by the name of the Zssenes.1_ Be this 
as it may, one thing is certain: such books cannot possibly 
have exercised a decisive influence on the religious thought 
of Jesus. No man now can read the book of Enoch, the 
best of the class, except as a task connected with some 
special line of study, and it was probably little less dreary 
reading at the beginning of our era. Jesus, at all events, 
drew His inspiration from a very different source. Isaiah, 
especially Isaiah the second, was more to His taste than 
these fantastic apocalypses. A stray phrase may have 
found its way into His vocabulary from that quarter, but 
beyond this an influence emanating thence is not dis- 
cernible in the Gospels. 

The apocalyptic literature revived after a fashion the 
Messianic hope, and for this, perhaps, we ought to be 
grateful. But when we study more closely the presenta- 
tion therein given of the Messianic age, we are conscious 
only of a limited sense of indebtedness, In some respects, 
indeed, there appears to be an advance beyond the stand- 
point of the great prophets. The view, for example, is 
extended from the nation to the world. The individual 
also comes more to the front as the recipient of blessing, 


the boon promised being resurrection to everlasting life. . 


On the other hand, the swmmwm bonum becomes here 
transcendent; it is transferred to the world to come, and 
has no place among the realities of the present world. 
Finally, in the apocalyptic presentation of the Messianic 
hope we pass from the poetry of the prophets to the dull, 
dogmatic prose of the scribes? Reading an apocalytic 
picture of the good time coming does not affect us like 
reading the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah. The latter thrills, 


! So Thomson (Books which Influenced our Lord and His Apostles) after 
Hilgenfeld. The Essenes are, as Cheyne in his Bampton Lectures on the 
Psalter well expresses it, ‘‘twilight figures” (p. 421), and of their con- 
nection with the apocalyptic literature there is little or no evidence. 

2 On the Messianic hope of the period of the scribes compared with that 
of the prophets, vide especially Schiirer, Zhe Jewish People in the Time of 
Jesus Christ, Div. II. vol. ii. p. 180 ff. 


—s 


THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM. 293 


consoles, moves to tears; the former makes us melancholy. 
Scholars may revive a professional interest in apocalyptic, 
and it is not to be denied that the exegete of the New 
Testament may learn something from their labours; but 
the great heart of humanity has only one duty to perform 
towards it, and that is to consign it to oblivion, 

An account of the religion of Israel during the period 
now under review would not be complete without a brief 
reference to the Jews scattered abroad over the Gentile 
world. The Diaspora, or dispersion, covered a wide area 
from Babylon to Asia Minor, but its chief seat was the 
Greek city of Alexandria, in Egypt, wherein a large number 
of Jews found a home under the friendly reign of the 
Ptolemies. The phenomenon, therefore, which above all 
invites attention in this connection is Hellenism ; that. is, 
Jewish religious thought as coloured by Greek influence in 
that great centre of Greek culture. Two facts of out- 
standing importance are associated with the movement : 
the use of the Greek language as an instrument for the 
diffusion of Judaism, and the use of Greek philosophy as 
an instrument for its dissipation. ? 

The Jews resident in Alexandria, as a natural result 
of their intercourse with the Greeks, soon became Greek- 
speaking. An inevitable consequence of this was that a 
demand soon arose among them for a translation of the 
Hebrew Scriptures into their adopted tongue. The result 
was the Septuagint. Marvellous tales came into circula- 
tion at a later date respecting the circumstances under 
which this famous version was executed. The truth seems 
to be that it was produced, not by the authority and under 
the patronage of kings or high priests, but by private enter- 
prise, in response to the general wish of the Alexandrian 
Jews, and to meet their religious needs. It was a work 
of time, the translation of the law, as the most important 
part of Scripture, being first undertaken; that of other 
portions following in due course. The great work was 
begun probably about the middle of the third century B.C. 


294 APOLOGETICS. 


and had reached completion by the year 132 B.c., as we 
learn from the son of Sirach, who visited Egypt at that 
time, and found there a Greek version of “the law, and the 
prophecies, and the rest of the books.”1 The end aimed 
at was primarily the edification of Greek-speaking Jews, 
but, doubtless, through the Greek Bible many Gentiles 
became acquainted with the religion of the remarkable 
people that had settled among them. 

The Septuagint has been carefully searched for traces of 
the influence of Greek philosophy on the mind of the 
translators. What we do find is clear evidence that the 
translators were not uninfluenced by the change that had 
come over their countrymen in Palestine in their way of 
thinking concerning God. There is the same tendency 
that we have noted in Leviticalism, and in some of the 
later books of Scripture, to conceive of God as transcendent, 
far away above the world and human sin and infirmity. 
For Jehovah the translators substitute “the Lord,” 6 xdpsos. 
All anthropopathisms and anthropomorphisms in the 
original they carefully soften down. “God repented” 
is rendered “God reflected”;2 the statement that the 
elders of Israel saw God is transformed into “saw the 
place where God stood,” ® and the privilege of Moses to see 
God’s form becomes a privilege to see His glory. 

With all its defects, the Greek version of the Hebrew 
Scriptures was an important service rendered to the religion 
of Israel. The employment of Greek philosophy as an 
instrument of thought and vehicle of the Jewish faith was 
of more doubtful value. A full account of this movement 
cannot here be given. We see it in the initial stage in 
the Wisdom of Solomon, in which God is represented as 
creating the world out of formless matter, as a previously 
existing datum,® and the body of man is spoken of as the 
seat of sin, pressing down the soul and hindering the free 


1 Vide Prologue to the Wisdom of Sirach. 
* Gen. vi. 6. 8 Ex. xxiv. 10. ¢ Num, xii, 8 
5 ig &uophov vAns, xi. 18, 


THE NIGHT OF LEGALISM. 295 


exercise of thought! It reached its consummation in 
Philo, a contemporary of Jesus whose manner of conceiv- 
ing God has been already indicated Philo was a gifted 
and cultured Jew spoiled by being transformed into a 
second-rate Greek philosopher. As a thinker, he was a 
Jew in form and a Greek in spirit. He was a cross 
between Moses and Plato. He took his texts from Moses, 
and delivered on them sermons full of Platonic ideas and 
un-Platonic rhetoric. For what we find in his writings is 
Plato at second hand, and very degenerate. Between his 
turgid discourses and Plato’s exquisitely graceful dialogues 
there is as great a difference as between Jewish apocalyptic 
and Hebrew prophecy. ‘There is no true originality and 
inspiration in him. He is a brilliant yet barren writer, 
who will found no school and communicate enthusiasm to 
no susceptible reader. The time at which he was born, 
and his considerable importance in the eyes of his con- 
temporaries, might suggest the question, Can this be he 
who should come? But one has only to peruse a few 
pages of his voluminous writings to be satisfied that who- 
ever was destined to put the crown on Israel’s religious 
development it was not Philo. No deliverance was to 
come to the Jews or to the world from that quarter. 

Philo and the scribes were very unlike each other, yet 
there was one bond of connection between them. How- 
ever wide apart their respective ways and goals, they 
had the same starting-point. They both ascribed divine 
authority to the law, and professed to derive all they 
taught from that sacred source. Out of it Philo educed 
Greek philosophy; the scribe, the traditions of the elders. 
It was possible to arrive at so diverse results through the 
employment of different methods of interpretation. Philo’s 
method was the free use of allegory; the scribe’s was a 
mechanical, irrational literalism.4 The two methods, both 


1 gbaprav yap cae Bupives puxyy, ix. 15. 
2 Born probably 10 B.o. © > Vide p. 287. 
4 The scribes strove to snow that the whole of the traditional law could be 


296 APOLOGETICS, 


alike vicious, supply instructive examples of the fatal abuse 
of a sacred text-book, showing how what might have been 
a light to the feet became an ignis fatwus, and a rule of 
faith was perverted into a blind guide of the blind. From 
these instances we learn that no book, however excellent, 
can be a self-acting infallible guide, and that all depends on 
how it is used. The higher the authority ascribed to it 
the more it will mislead, if false reverence be allowed to 
extinguish the light of reason. It would have been better 
for the Alexandrian Jewish philosophers and Palestinian 
scribes to have discarded the Book, and to have taught on 
their own authority. Their doctrine would have been 
much the same as it was, and they would have been saner 
and honester men. ‘Their reverence for Scripture was a 
new form of idolatry, which took possession of the Jewish 
people after they had finally conquered all other forms. It 
proved to be the deadliest of all. They searched the 
Scriptures, and the more they searched the further they 
erred from truth and God. 

The foregoing sketch of the religion of Israel during the 
centuries intervening between the Old Testament and the 
New is very disenchanting. The voice of prophecy hushed ; 
scribism in the ascendant; God, partly through foreign 
influence, become transcendent and far-off; the evil spirit 
of sectarianism making its appearance; artificial pseudo- 
prophetic compositions taking the place of genuine prophetic 
oracles, and vapid Alexandrian rhetoric superseding grave 
Hebrew eloquence; the people of the living word becoming 
the people of the Book and making of that Book a fetich. 
Truly a dark time, in which even the brightest mani- 
festation of the Hebrew religious spirit was of very mixed 
moral worth, the Maccaban patriotic movement being 
by no means an exhibition of pure devotion to the 


deduced from the written law. The feat was accomplished by aid of seven 
rules of interpretation formulated by Hillel, which look very innocent, but 
as actually employed could be made to educe any conclusions out of any 
premises. Vide Farrar’s Bampton Lectures on the History of Interpreta- 
tion, p. 18, 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 297 


universal interest of eternal righteousness, but in part a 
semi-fanatical outburst of zeal for national customs of 
merely statutory value! The whole picture in all its 
aspects is a trial to our faith in the religious vocation of 
Israel. If Israel’s religion was of special concern to God 
how was it allowed to come to this? If the divine spirit 
was immanent in Israel’s religious history, whence this 
tremendous degeneracy ? The phenomenon has its parallel 
in the history of the Christian Church which presents, in 
ecclesiastical Christianity as compared with the Christianity 
of Christ, a contrast not less glaring than that between 
prophetism and scribism. Such declensions are facts with 
which faith must reconcile itself the best way it can. 
In the case of the earlier declension the feat is not 
impossible. The lapse served to make the inherent defect 
of the legal system signally apparent, and so prepared the 
way for Jesus.” 


CHAPTER IX. 
THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 


LITERATURE.—Butler, Analogy (Part JI. Chapter 111.) ; 
Pécaut, Le Christ et la Conscience; Robertson Smith, The Old 
Testament in the Jewish Church (2nd edition); Simon, The 
Bible an Outgrowth of Theocratie Interature; Ladd, The 
Doctrine of Sacred Scripture; Gladden, Who wrote the Buble ? 
Reuss, Histoire du Canon des Saintes-Ecritures (translated) ; 
Buhl, Kanon und Text des Alten Testamentes (translated by 


10n this fact Darmesteter rests his chief argument against Havet’s theory 
of the origin of the prophetic writings in the Maccabean period. The 
originality of the prophets, he says, ‘‘is precisely that they are not con- 
servers or restorers of the past, as were the Maccabees ; they are the creators 
of the future. They are the apostles of a new faith which goes to elevate the 
nation above the brutalities of the universe.” —Les Prophétes d’Israel, p. 132. 
He also remarks truly that the conquerors referred to in the prophetic 
writings do not appear, like Antiochus Epiphanes, as tyrants over 
conscience, p. 130. ; 

2 Vide on this Riehm, Alttestamentiiche Theologie, p. 371. 


2298 | APOLOGETICS. 


T, & T. Clark); Kirkpatrick, The Divine Library of the 
Old Testament; Driver, Introduction to the Interature of 
the Old Testament; Ryle, The Canon of the Old Testament, 
1892. 


To say that God gave a special revelation to Israel is not 
the same thing as to say that He gave to Israel a collec- 
tion of sacred books. Revelation and the Bible are not 
synonyms. There was a revelation long before there was 
a Bible. God revealed Himself in history as the God of 
the whole earth, graciously choosing Israel to be in the 
first place the recipient of the supreme blessing of the 
knowledge of the true God, and to be eventually His 
snstrument for communicating that knowledge to the whole 
world. He revealed Himself as a gracious electing God to 
the consciousness of Israel, through spiritual insight into 
the true significance of her history communicated to the 
prophets ; first to Moses, and then, in later centuries, to 
the prophets whose oracles have been preserved in books 
bearing their names. The election, and the providential 
training of Israel, and the eradually attained insight into 
the fact and purpose of the election, would have been a 
most important self-revelation of God though a literature 
of revelation never had arisen; and it would have accom- 
plished most important purposes, though, as Bishop Butler 
remarks, not all the purposes which a recorded revelation 
has answered, and in the same degree.’ Great things were 
done by God in Israel before the Hebrew Bible came into 
existence. Nay, one might say that the best days of 
Israel were over before the sacred Book appeared ; that 
Jehovah was more manifestly present among the chosen 
people when she was the people of the living Word, 
than when she becamé the people of the written Book. 
The people of the Book were a degenerate people; the 
emergence of the Book was coincident with the night of 
legalism; and the use made of it was to a large extent 
idolatrous, and such as tended to hide rather than reveal 

1 Analogy, Part II. chap. iii. 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 299 


God; this, however, from no fault of the Book, but rather 
from the fault of its readers. 

While all this is true, it is nevertheless also true that 
given a revelation such as God communicated to Israel, 
a literature of revelation, though not a matter of & priort 
necessity, was a highly probable consequence. Record of 
some sort might be pronounced, in a broad sense, indis- 
pensable. The record might, indeed, conceivably be 
merely oral. How far oral tradition would have been an 
adequate means of preserving the knowledge of God’s self- 
manifestations, and the idea of God these embodied, is a 
question of subordinate importance. All that we are 
concerned to maintain at present is, that if God specially 
revealed Himself to Israel it was well that all should have 
knowledge of the fact and of the mode and measure of the 
revelation vouchsafed, and that a written record, if not 
the only means of communicating such knowledge, is at 
least a most valuable means. As to the former part of 
this thesis, its truth is recognised in the familiar words 
of the Psalter: “One generation shall praise Thy works 
to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts. I will 
speak of the glorious honour of Thy majesty, and of Thy 
wondrous works. And men shall speak of the might of 
Thy terrible acts: and I will declare Thy greatness. They 
shall abundantly utter the memory of Thy great goodness, 
and shall sing of Thy righteousness.”2 As to the latter 
part of the thesis, the Westminster Confession expresses 
itself in these sober terms: “Therefore it pleased the 
Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal 
Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church ; 
and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating 
of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and 
comfort of the Church against the corruption of the 
flesh and the malice of Satan and of the world, to 
commit the same wholly unto writing, which maketh 
Holy Scripture to be most necessary, those former ways 

1 Ps, exlv. 4-7. 


| 300 APOLOGETICS. 


of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now 
ceased,” } 

This doctrine may be regarded as beyond question, if 
the words “most necessary” be taken as implying a very 
high degree of utility, amounting to a practical necessity. 
Only when they are so interpreted as to involve the dogma 
that without the knowledge of Scripture salvation is 
absolutely impossible, are they fitted to create a prejudice 
such as finds occasional expression in the sneers at the 
religion of Christendom as a Book revelation. It cannot 
be denied that believers in the incomparable value of the 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the authentic 
records of divine revelations, have not always been 
sufficiently careful to avoid giving occasion for this 
unhappy prejudice. It was the tendency of theologians 
in the scholastic period of Protestantism to connect the 
ideas of revelation and record so closely together as to 
convey a false impression as to the precise function of 
Scripture. The Bible was to them not only the record of 
revelation, but the revelation itself, and hence acquaintance 
with the record was deemed indispensable to participation 
in the benefit of revelation. Unless men knew the written 
record, God might as well never have revealed Himself so 
far as they were concerned. An interesting illustration 
of this tendency is supplied by Richard Baxter. Baxter 
and Dr. Owen were together members of a committee 
appointed by the Parliament which made Cromwell 
Protector to draw up a list of fundamentals. The list was 
intended to define the meaning of the words occurring in the 
instrument of government, “ faith in God by Jesus Christ,” it 
being laid down in that document that all who professed such 
faith should have liberty, or free exercise of their religion. 
The divines appointed to perform the momentous task of 
fixing the basis of religious toleration, very soon found, in 
Baxter’s quaint language, “how ticklish a business the 
enumeration of fundamentals was.” Among the points in 


1 (hap. i, section 1, 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 301 


dispute, according to our informant, was this: whether 
the knowledge of Holy Scripture was absolutely necessary 
to salvation. Dr. Owen took the affirmative side, and 
wished to make a fundamental of the dogma, “that no 
man could know God to salvation by any other means,’ 
evidently desiring to use it as a means of excluding the 
papists from the benefits of toleration. Baxter, as one 
would expect, stoutly maintained the negative, contending 
that Dr. Owen’s thesis was neither a fundamental nor a 
truth, and that if, among the papists or any others, a poor 
Christian should believe by the teaching of another with- 
out ever knowing that there is a Scripture, he should be 
saved, because it is promised that whosoever believed 
should be saved! The weakness of Owen’s position is 
apparent, and its mischievousness not less so; not merely 
in unduly narrowing the limits of religious toleration to 
the disturbance of the peace of the commonwealth, but 
still more in exposing faith in the utility of Scripture to 
the bitter assaults of free thinkers like Rousseau, who found 
it an easy task to refute such a doctrine as that of Owen 
by the method of reductio ad absurdum. How different 
from this exaggerated and perilous way of speaking con- 
cerning the Bible indulged in by the theologian of the 
seventeenth century, the sober, moderate, dignified state- 
ment of the Apostle Paul, “All scripture given by in- 
spiration is profitable,’? useful. He does not deem it 
necessary to lay down a negative position as to what 
can be done without Scripture. He is content to teach 
positively that the Scriptures are useful for the ends of 
religious edification. Whatever may befall the man who 
has not the felicity to enjoy the aid of this valuable 
means of grace, it is certain, in Paul’s judgment, that the 
man who has the Scriptures in his hand, and makes a 
wise use of them, is in a fair way of becoming perfect, 
thoroughly furnished unto all good works. 

The utility and value of the Hebrew Scriptures arise 

1 Reliquie Baxteriane, p. 199. 22 Tim. iii. 16, 


302 APOLOGETICS. 


ultimately from this, that they are a literature of revelation, 
that is to say a record and interpretation of the self 
revelation of God to Israel. This has to be borne in mind 
in comparing these writings with other books of a highly 
edifying character. Leaving this fact out of sight, one 
may think himself justified in putting certain books on a 
level with the Bible, or even in some respects above it. 
The Bible, it may be said, is a very good book, profitable 
for edification without doubt; but then there are other 
books also remarkable for this quality, such as the Con- 
fessions of St. Augustine, and the golden treatise of A 
Kempis on the Imitation of Christ, not to speak of the 
Dialogues of Plato and the Meditations of Antoninus. 
“Think you,” asks a French writer of the school of 
Theodore Parker, “I search not my edification in the Bible, 
that it has ceased to console me, to lead me to repentance, 
to turn me from evil, to excite me to good? Have I 
given up using it as my daily bread, and has it disappeared 
from my house? Assuredly not. All I say-is that nothing 
in the impression I receive from that book resembles 
authority. Between the Confessions of St. Augustine, 
the Meditations of Bossuet, the Imitation of Jesus Christ, 
and the Bible, I see a difference of degree, not of nature.” * 
The answer to this is that the Bible is not a mere book of 
devotion, and still less, of course, a mere book of general 
literature, the literary remains of the Hebrew people. 
Viewed from the merely devotional or literary point of 
view, the Bible in some parts may be inferior to other 
books that might be named. But in this respect it is 
unique, that it is a literature which providentially grew 
up around a historical revelation of God in Israel, and 
which performs for that revelation the function of an 
atmosphere, diffusing the sunlight, so that the knowledge 
of God is spread abroad over all the earth. And in virtue 
of this function it may in an intelligible sense be called 
an authoritative book. ‘There is no other book but the 
1 Pécaut, Le Christ et la Conscience, pp. 19, 20. 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 303 


Bible which serves this precise end, and the authority it 
possesses on that account can be got rid of only by denying 
the reality of the revelation of which it is the record. 

In the light of this function other attributes ascribed by 
theologians to Scripture are most easily understood and 
vindicated—perfection, for example, or infallibility. In 
view of the unique nature of the holy writings as the 
literature of revelation, it is possible to assign to these 
attributes an important meaning without advancing what 
might be regarded as extravagant or ill-founded claims. 
In this connection it is of the utmost moment to distinguish 
between what individual believers hold as matter of per- 
sonal conviction, and what as believers in revelation we 
are bound to hold. One may believe that the Scriptures 
in general, and the Hebrew Scriptures in particular, are 
characterised by absolute immunity from error in fact or 
sentiment, and yet as an apologist be entitled to ask, Is 
this characteristic necessarily involved in the end which 
these writings were designed to subserve ? It will be 
obvious that the maintenance of the affirmative on this 
question is somewhat perilous, when it is considered in 
what state we possess the Scriptures now. For the million 
the only means of knowing the sacred books is through 
translations, which, however faithfully executed on the 
whole, do nevertheless but imperfectly reflect the sense 
of the original. Then even for the learned the Hebrew 
and Greek texts do not exist in their original purity. 
Nay, the text of the Hebrew Bible, with which we are at 
present concerned, never existed as one whole, in absolute 
purity. The errorless autograph for which some so zeal- 
ously contend is a theological figment. There may con- 
ceivably have been such a document for each part in 
succession, but there never was an errorless autograph 
of the collection as a whole. The Bible was produced 
piecemeal, and by the time the later portions were pro- 
duced the earlier had lost their supposed immaculateness. 
And that we may see how necessary it is to be circumspect 


304 APOLOGETICS. 


in our 4 priori demands of perfection and faultlessness, it is 
well to remember in what form the words of the Hebrew 
autographs were written. They were written with con- 
sonants only, the vowels being left to be supplied by the 
reader, the result being that no man but the writer could 
be perfectly sure in numerous cases what he intended to 
say, and not even the writer himself, in every case, after 
the lapse of time long enough to allow partial forgetfulness 
of his thought to occur. The Masoretic Hebrew text is 
thus only an approximately accurate translation by Jewish 
scholars of the vowelless original." This defect of the 
Hebrew language as written is an awkward characteristic of 
a book bound to be absolutely accurate in all its statements 
under pain of being tossed aside as useless in case a single 
error great or small be detected in it. No wonder some 
of the most logically consistent dogmatists of the seven- 
teenth century met the dilemma by boldly maintaining 
that the vowel points were inspired? Unfortunately this 
course cannot now be followed even by the boldest dog- 
matist, and the only way of escape is to cherish the hope 
that the Hebrew Bible can be useful, supremely useful, for 
the end for which it was given, without possessing all the 
imaginary virtues which self-constituted champions of its 
perfection claim for it. In accordance with that view the 
aim of the apologist must be to ascertain the minimum 
requirements necessary to accomplish that end. 

In order to serve their end as the literature of revela- 
tion the Hebrew Scriptures would need to be a reliable 
record of Israel’s history in its main outlines, and a trust- 
worthy interpretation of the meaning of that history. 
The hypothesis of faith is that in the history of Israel God 
revealed Himself as the God of a gracious purpose, and 
from the literature of revelation, if it deserve the name, 


1 Vide on this Professor Robertson Smith’s Old Testament in the Jewish 
Church, Lect. ii., and Professor Kirkpatrick’s Divine Library of the Old 
Testament, Lect. iii. 

2 So the Formula Consensus Helvetica. Vide Heppe, Die Dogmatik der 
Evangelisch Reformirten Kirche, pp. 18, 19. 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURES. 305 


{t ought to be possible to learn enough of that history to 
see the purpose unfolding itself, and to get guidance in 
the interpretation of the essential facts from men to whom 
has been fully opened up the secret of the Lord. It is 
not necessary that every particular historical statement 
should be correct, but the general impression made by the 
whole story of Israel, as that of a people in a peculiar 
manner related to God, ought to be true, and the religious 
conception of Israel’s vocation, and of God’s character in 
‘connection therewith, formed by the prophets and embodied 
in their writings, ought to be objectively valid. If we 
cannot rely on the history in its main outlines, as the 
history of an elect people, and on the prophetic reading of 
the history, then there is no evidence that a special revela- 
tion took place. If, on the other hand, we can rely on 
- both these, the Hebrew Scriptures are sufficient for this 
end; perfect for the purpose for which they were given, 
and a sure guide to faith, no matter how many defects 
there may be in the historical record, whether in the form 
of dacune, or of individual facts not quite accurately 
represented. 
At this point the question may naturally be raised, How 
is the religious value of the Old Testament affected by 
critical views as to the late origin of the Pentateuch and of 
_ the law asa written code? The question resolves into two: 
_ First, assuming the correctness of these critical views, what 
value have the relative parts of the Bible for the unlearned 
reader entirely ignorant of criticism: do they not seriously 
mislead him? Second, how far can these Scriptures retain 
_ their value as a religious guide for those who accept the 
_ results of critical inquiry ? 
The unlearned reader regards the Pentateuch as the 
work of Moses, and all the laws it contains as delivered 
by him to Israel in the name of Jehovah. With this view 
he accepts all the statements he finds in the five books 
with reference to Israel’s early history, and the incidents of 
_ the forty years’ sojourn in the wilderness as absolutely and 
U 


a 


ae 


306 APOLOGETICS, 


literally correct. If critical theories be well founded, this 
implicit confidence is to a certain extent misplaced. 
Certain laws, for example, are put into the mouth of 
Moses, which were in reality of much later date, if not 
as customs, at least as divine commands. The plain reader 
is thus occasionally misled as to matters of historical fact; 
the thing did not always so happen as he is led to imagine. 
But does he get a wrong religious impression by taking 
all that is stated concerning the origins of Israel in Genesis, 
and concerning the Sinaitic legislation in the following 
books, as literally and exactly true? Certainly not; on 
the contrary, he simply learns with added emphasis the 
lessons which, on any theory that accepts revelation as a 
fact, the books in question were intended to convey: that 
Israel was a chosen people, and that God’s covenant with 
Israel was formed through the mediation of Moses. The 
first of these truths is vividly set forth in the story of the 
patriarchs in Genesis. The critical student of the Bible 
may have misgivings as to the historical exactness of many 
particulars in that story, but if he be a believing man he 
will accept the general significance of the narrative, viz. 
that from the very first God was preparing a people that 
should stand in peculiar relations to Himself, and perform 
a very important function in the religious history of the 
world. The unlearned man takes from the story the same 
meaning, only with greatly enhanced impressiveness be- 
cause of his implicit contidence in all the details. So 
likewise with regard to the law. For the critic the law 
is Mosaic, only in the sense that it is the result of a 
development out of historical Mosaism. The Mosaic 
legislation, for him, ,contained the Levitical code only in 
the sense in which the acorn contains the oak. The one 
- God of the Decalogue led eventually to one sanctuary, and 
the one sanctuary led in turn to a definitely regulated 
worship. For the unlearned man the one sanctuary and 
the priestly code are Mosaic in the same sense as the 
Decalogue is. In his way of viewing the matter, the tree 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 307 


did not grow, but was created full grown; just as for the 
generations of men who lived before the doctrine of evolu- 
tion came into vogue, the diverse species of living creatures 
were regarded as immediate creations, not as the slow 
product of a secular development. Historically and scien- 
tifically he may be mistaken as to the genesis of the law, 
as our forefathers are believed to have been mistaken as to 
the genesis of species; but his very mistake only tends 
to strengthen what even the believing critic admits to be 
a true impression: that the law as found in the Pentateuch 
was Mosaic. The difference between him and the critic 
is this: The critic says the law grew out of Mosaism, the 
plain man says the law was given by Moses. 

It cannot be denied that the unlearned reader of the 
Scriptures loses something through his ignorance of criti- 
cism, assuming always that its conclusions are well founded. 
He does not understand the real course of Israel’s religious 
history, and misses all the edification which an intelligent 
view of that history is fitted to yield. Then through lack 
of such insight many things in the historical records remain 
unexplained puzzles for him. If, eg., the law of the one 
sanctuary was as old as Moses, how came it to pass that, 
up to a certain date, nobody, not even prophets and pious 
kings, seemed to know of it, or to pay any heed to it? And 
how is it that in certain books of the Pentateuch a careful 
distinction is made between priests and Levites, while in 
Deuteronomy they seem to be identified? And why do 
the Levites always appear in the fifth book of the Penta- 
teuch poor portionless men, while in the middle books we 
find careful legislative provision for their needs ? 

The existence of such unsolved problems for the un- 
learned reader doubtless tends to mar his edification. But 
the evil is not irremediable. Criticism can be popularised 
The process indeed involves peril. There is a risk that 
old reverence may be lost while new knowledge is being 
acquired. But that risk, to which faith is exposed in all 
times of transition, must be run, It will not do to say: 


i! 


- 308 APOLOGETICS. 


leave the plain man alone to enjoy his Bible in his own 
fashion; surely he can get all the benefit the Bible was 
intended to convey to devout souls without being de- 
pendent on scholars. The fact is not so. The plain man 
can get some good from the Bible, enough to save his soul, 
without the aid of critics; but not all the good that is 
possible. He is much indebted to biblical scholarship for 
even the benefit he does derive from an uncritically read 
Bible. Without the aid of scholars he could have had no 
access to the Bible. First, the Massoretes had to furnish 
the Hebrew texts with vowel-signs, to indicate how the 
words were to be read and eliminate all possible ambi- 
guities, Then men learned in Hebrew and Greek had to 
render the Old and New Testaments from the original 
languages into the common tongues. More recently ex- 
perts have had to revise translations, to make them more 
exact, and to bring the Bible in the vernacular into more 
perfect correspondence with the best text of the original. 
All this lies behind us. It is now the turn of the critics 
to do their best for the people. This is the task of the 
future,? 

But suppose the work done, the question which next 
arises is, How far will a critically instructed public be able 
to retain its faith in the Bible as a God-given, sure religious 
guide? Now in this connection it is a very reassuring 
consideration, that on critical views of the late origin of 
the Levitical law all New Testament verdicts concerning 
the law’s function and value remain not only unreversed, 
but greatly strengthened. This point need only be referred 
to here, as it has been already handled in a previous 
chapter. But there is another matter which has to be 
looked into. It may be thought that the ascription of 
laws to Moses, which in the actual form they assume in 


1 The task is even now being performed by such books as those of Robert- 
son Smith, Kirkpatrick, Sanday, Ryle, Gladden, referred to at the head of 
this chapter. 

2 Vide p, 275. 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 309 


the Pentateuch were of much later date, is an act of bad 
faith, a pia fraus, which makes it hard to believe in the 
inspiration of those who were parties to it. Now without 
constituting ourselves special pleaders for Ezra and his 
associates, let it be frankly granted that their notions, the 
notions of their age and people, regarding literary morality 
were not the same as ours. If the critics are right, Hebrew 
editors could do without hesitation what we should think 
hardly compatible with literary honesty: mix up things 
old and new, ancient laws with recent additions; report 
sayings of the wise, with editorial comments not dis- 
tinguished as such; collect utterances of different sages 
and prophets under one name; weave different versions of 
one and the same event into one continuous though not 
always harmonious narrative, without giving the slightest 
hint of what they were doing. But what then? This may 
be crude morality, but it is not immorality. For there is 
a broad distinction between these two things. Immorality 
means breaking a recognised moral law; crude morality 
means conforming to a low moral standard. The former 
produces an evil conscience which may well be regarded 
as exclusive of all true inspiration;? the latter is compatible 
with a perfectly good conscience, and therefore with a state 
of heart open to God’s inspiring influence. Deborah was 
a heroic woman, and a true inspired prophetess, but she 
could write the words: “To every man a damsel or two,” ? 
without feeling that she was saying anything indelicate or 
immoral. It was not immorality, as it would be to us, but 
it was very crude, barbarous morality. We must beware 
of laying down hard and fast abstract rules as to the 
conditions under which inspiration is possible. We only 
make difficulties for ourselves by so doing, and play into 
the hands of unbelief. Free thinkers of the eighteenth 
century objected to the Bible as a professed revelation, 


1 The case of Balaam raises the question whether even a good conscience 
be an indispensable condition of inspiration. 
2 Judg. v. 30. 


310 APOLOGETICS. 


because they held that if God was to make a revelation 
He would use as His instruments more exemplary men than 
the outstanding characters of the Bible are. It is arguing 
in the same spirit to say that God could not inspire, or 
employ as His agents, men capable of what we now might 
feel tempted to call a pia fraus, It is a sample of the 
mischievous apriorism which it is so difficult to get rid of 
in connection with this class of questions. It is, it may be 
added, an instance of the common tendency of religious 
people to patronise God, that is to say, to be more solicitous 
for His honour and dignity than He is Himself. How 
much of this there has been in connection with the sacred 
writings! God must write Hebrew with vowel points, 
otherwise His meaning will be ambiguous. .He must write 
good, Attic Greek, free from Hebraisms and Hellenistic 
barbarisms, otherwise His reputation as an author will be 
compromised. He must employ paragdns of moral ex- 
cellence as the instruments of revelation, lest His holiness 
be stained by human faults. What is to be said of all 
this, and more of the like sort, but that it is folly like 
that of Job’s friends, who constituted themselves patrons 
and champions of divine righteousness, and maintained 
that no really good man ever was allowed to suffer 
as Job suffered. The proper answer to all such a priori 
theorising is an appeal to fact. The righteous may suffer, 
for I suffer, said Job, sturdily refusing to deny facts 
because they might upset pet theories. God may inspire 
men who commit what we deem literary sins, say we, 
for books of the Bible in which these so-called literary 
sins are committed bear all the marks of inspiration 
——the divine in us.bearing witness to the divine in 
them. 

The utility of the Scriptures as a literature of revelation 
naturally involves that great importance should be attached 
to the collection into one volume or library of all the 
writings regarded as coming legitimately under that cate- 
gory. In theological language, the function of Scripture 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 311 


demands a canon of Scripture.’ Now the history of the 
formation of the canon, in the case both of the Old and the 
New Testaments, is very disappointing. ‘The facts are by 
no means such as we should naturally have anticipated. 
If one firmly believing in a divine revelation, and alive to 
the value of a written record and interpretation to insure 
that such a revelation should not be made in vain, were to 
set himself to sketch an @ priori history of the Bible, the 
result might be something like this: “ As each new scene 
in the drama of revelation was brought on the stage of 
history, God by a very special providence saw to it that a 
competent chronicler and interpreter should be at hand, 
and should give a clear, correct, and full account of all 
that had been done and said, and that when the writing 
was finished it should be duly certified and laid up for 
preservation in a safe place. Thus, for example, was pro- 
vided for the information of all after ages a thoroughly 
reliable, absolutely accurate record of the history of God’s - 
dealings with the chosen race from the time of Abraham's 
call to the time of settlement in the promised land, written 
by men whose names are attached to the sections of the 
narrative of which they were the authors. In the same 
way was provided for the use of the Christian Church a 
full, accurate, self-consistent account of the life of Christ, 
written by eye-witnesses and certified to be their work by 
evidence not to be gainsaid) And when the drama of 
revelation was complete then all the separate books were 
gone over, and, being found duly attested, were put together 
as one in the face of the world by a body of responsible 
men who were unanimous in their judgment as to what 
ought to enter into the sacred collection.” How different 
the actual state of the case from this fancy picture! Not 
a few of the books which make up the Bible are anonymous, 
and it is not possible to ascertain with certainty when or 
by whom they were written. In the case of a book like 


10Qn the history and meaning of the term, vide Reuss, Histowe de 
Canon des Saintes-Ecritures dans L’ Eglise Chrétienne, chap. xii, 


312 APOLOGETICS. 


Job that does not greatly matter, as its religious value is toa 
large extent independent of time and authorship. But it is 
a more serious thing to be left in doubt as to the authorship 
and date of the Pentateuch. The five Books of Moses, as 
they are commonly called, would have a much higher 
historical value if it were certain that Moses was their 
author, than if there were reason to believe that not even a 
considerable part of the literary material contained in the 
books, not to speak of the documents as they now exist, 
proceeded from the hand of the hero of the Exodus, The 
view taken by modern critics on this grave question is 
well known. It is not necessary here to discuss the question, 
but simply to advert to the fact that there is a question, 
as one of the disappointing phenomena connected with the 
sacred writings which run quite contrary to antecedent 
expectation. The dubiety about the authorship of the 
Gospels, especially of the Fourth Gospel, is another fact of 
‘the same kind. And there are many more. If it were a 
mere matter of doubts started by modern critics regarding 
the authorship of particular books in either Testament, the 
devout student might contrive to bear it with equanimity, 
comforting himself with the reflection that the modern 
mind is impatient of the fetters of faith, and has indulged 
in sceptical speculations concerning the Bible to a licentious 
extent in a passionate desire to regain freedom. But even 
in the ancient believing ages there were doubts: doubts as 
to the books which ought to be included in the sacred col- 
lection, doubts, eg., in connection with the New Testament in 
reference to no less than seven of its books: the Book of 
Revelation, and the Epistles of James, Jude, 2nd Peter, 
2nd and 3rd John, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. And 
there is reason to believe that similar doubts prevailed for 
a time in reference to certain Old Testament books, and 
that the Jewish Church, not less than the Christian, had 
its list of antilegomena.’ It is true indeed that in both 


1 Those chiefly belonged to the third division of the Hebrew Bible, the 
Kethubim. Vide on this Ryle, The Canon of the Old Testament, chap. viii. 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 313 


eases these doubts were at length overcome. But how 
much more comfortable it would have been to know that 
there never had been any doubts, or room for them; as one 
cannot but feel that where there has been doubt once there 
may be doubt again, and that the hesitations of the Jewish 
and Christian Churches really signify that on the subject of 
the canon one can never get beyond probabilities. 

The foregoing facts suggest certain reflections. The first 
is that it was manifestly not God’s will to provide for 
the formation of a canon about which there could be no 
dispute, by a miraculous providence. It is conceivable that 
He might have done so, just as it is conceivable that He 
might have preserved the text of Scripture absolutely 
incorrupt. But neither in the one case nor in the other, 
nor indeed in anything relating to the Bible, has it pleased 
God to proceed in the way which we, looking at the matter 
theoretically, might think the best. But because there 
was no miraculous providence connected with the pro- 
duction of the Bible, it does not follow that God exercised 
over it no care whatever. We ought surely to apply to the 
Bible Origen’s maxim that no good and useful thing comes 
to men without the providence of God. A book so supremely 
good as the Bible is not here sine numine. In this view 
men of all schools—Grotius, Myers,? Gaussen 8—concur. 

A second reflection suggested by the facts above stated 
is, that a certain amount of dubiety concerning the history 
of the literature of revelation must be compatible with the 
realisation of the end for which, ex hypothesi, the Scriptures 
exist—to be a guide to religious faith. It seems due to the 
facts that doubts have existed even among believing men, 
regarding the anthenticity of certain books of Scripture, 
and the canonicity of others, that we should abstain from 
exaggerated views as to the indispensableness of certainty 
on such questions. Such views would not be wise either 

1 De Veritate Religionis Christiane, lib. iii. chap. ix. 


2 Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology, p. 61. 
3 The Canon of the Holy Scriptures, p. 431. 


314 APOLOGETICS. 


in respect of our own comfort as individual believers, or 
in respect of the public interest of the faith. It is not a 
wise policy to offer to men the alternatives: all or nothing, 
either the whole Bible as it stands an unquestionable 
revelation from God, or give up the idea of a revelation 
altogether; either an absolutely certain canon, or give up 
the notion of a divine purpose in connection with a col- 
lection of writings recording and illustrating revelation. 
Rather let us admit, what is notoriously the fact, that it 
is possible for a man to be a sincere and sound believer 
and exemplary Christian, and yet have doubts, even ill- 
grounded and unreasonable doubts, respecting particular 
books of Scripture ; in other words, let us admit that the end 
of the Scriptures as a whole, the edification of men in faith 
and holiness, may be realised while uncertainty prevails in 
reference to particular books of Scripture. The possibility 
of this is well illustrated by the case of Luther, who was a 
most orthodox believer, and a noble Christian man, well 
furnished for every good work, and specially for rendering 
the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into good idiomatic 
German, yet gravely doubted, nay strenuously denied, the 
canonicity of the Epistle of James, because it seemed to 
contradict the doctrine of justification by faith, his very 
orthodoxy being thus the source of his doubt, 

Orthodoxy and piety being indubitably, as matter of fact, 
compatible with doubts concerning the canonicity of certain 
parts of Scripture, the question naturally suggests itself, 
How may this compatibility be made evident as a matter 
of theory? We may employ for this purpose the idea of 
an organism. The Bible may be conceived as an organic 
body of writings, in which every particular book has its 
proper place and function. But in every living organism 
some organs are vital and some are not. There are parts 
of the body which to lose is to die; there are others which 
we may lose without dying, or even materially suffering in 
health, “Some members of the body,” writes Dr. Hodge, 
“are more important than others, and some books of the 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. $15 


Bible could be better spared than others. There may be 
as great a difference between John’s Gospel and the book of 
Chronicles as between a man’s brain and the hair of his 
head; nevertheless the life of the body is as truly in the 
hair as in the brain.”2 Dr. Hodge’s point is that even 
unimportant books may be inspired. But the observation 
quoted serves our purpose equally well, which is to show 
that there may be doubts about certain books of the Bible 
without vital consequence to faith ensuing. The hair of 
the head is a part of the body, yet a man can live com- 
fortably enough without it. In like manner it may happen 
to a man to be in doubt about this or the other book of 
Scripture, yet he may derive from the sacred writings the 
benefit they were designed to confer. It is not insinuated 
that all the books of the Bikle whose canonicity has been 
doubted are as unimportant to the organism of Scripture 
as the hair of the head is to the body. Who would say 
this of the Epistle to the Hebrews, concerning which the 
early Church for a season stood in doubt 2? The purpose is 
merely to throw out a general reflection that may be help- 
ful in perplexity, not to pronounce invidious judgments on 
individual books. 

The history of the formation of the Hebrew canon is 
involved in deep obscurity. According to modern critics 
st was the work of the exile and post-exile period. The 
foundation was laid by the compilation of the Pentateuch 
by or under the direction of Ezra, whereon was gradually 
built up the superstructure of the Prophets and the Psalms. 
To the Psalter were finally added other books, mostly of 
late origin, the whole forming a group called in the Hebrew 
Bible Kethubim, and in the Septuagint Hagiographa This 


1 Systematic Theology, i. 164. ; 

2Scholars distinguish three canons in the Hebrew Scriptures: 1, The 
Law, completed before 432 B.c. ; 2. The Law with the Prophets added, com- 
pleted about 200 z.c. ; 3. The full canon of the Law, the Prophets, and the 
Writings, completed about.100 a.p., but virtually settled 100 Bo. Vide 
Ryle, The Canon of the Old Testament, for a full account of all that relates 
to these three canons, 


=~ 


316 APOLOGETICS. 


miscellaneous group is, as has been remarked, “the region 
of the Old Testament antilegomena,” various books, such as 
Chronicles, Esther, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes, having, 
apparently, been the subject of dispute in the Jewish 
schools. On this view of the post-exilic origin of the 
Hebrew Bible one cannot but have an uncomfortable 
feeling that the scribes had more to do with the collecting 
of the sacred writings than a Christian can regard as at all 
desirable. For to the scribe the law was supreme, and 
everything else, prophecy and sacred song, of quite sub- 
ordinate importance. But the very fact that the Prophets 
and the Psalms found a place in the Hebrew Scriptures 
beside the Law shows that other influences were at 
work. For these portions of the Bible we are indebted, 
probably, far more to the piety of the Jewish people, than 
to the care of their legal instructors, They survive because 
the godly in Israel valued them as helpful to their spiritual 
life. All that the scribes had to do, when late in the day 
they turned their attention to the subject of the canon, 
was to recognise the verdict already pronounced by the 
voice of God’s people.! 

The law of the survival of the fittest may appear to some 
minds a very insecure basis on which to build the doctrine 
of the canon. It is common in matters of religion to 
demand more certainty than it is possible to obtain. To 
people of this temper the old view as to the formation of 
the Hebrew canon commends itself. It was founded on 
Jewish traditions of comparatively late origin. These 
traditions accredited Ezra, N ehemiah, and the Great Syna- 
gogue, as it was called, with a very important réle in con- 
nection with the collection of the sacred books. The legend 
assumed two forms—one very extravagant, the other more 
rational. According to the tale told in the fourth book of 
Ezra, an apocryphal writing belonging to the close of the 
first century B.C., the holy books having been destroyed at 


1 Vide on this Professor Robertson Smith’s Old Testament in the Jewish 
Church, 2nd ed. p. 163. 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 317 


the time of the captivity, Ezra restored them miraculously 
through divine inspiration, The soberer form of the 
tradition found in the Talmud ascribes to Ezra, Nehemiah, 
and the men of the Great Synagogue only the work of 
completing the canon, the earlier writings being ascribed to 
other authors: the Pentateuch to Moses, the Psalms to 
David, and so on. The men of the Great Synagogue 
reduced to writing only the books contained in the 
mnemonic word Kandag; Ezekiel, the twelve minor pro- 
phets, Daniel, and Esther} This tradition was afterwards 
modified so as to assign to Ezra a more important function. 
According to the later version, Ezra and the Great Synagogue 
collected into one volume the previously dispersed books, 
distributing them under the three heads of the Law, the 
Prophets, and the Kethubim. 

This tradition has been very variously regarded. 
Formerly it was received implicitly as true, and the opinion 
held that the canon of the Old Testament was simul et semel 
settled through divine inspiration by Ezra and the Great 
Synagogue, In more recent times it has been treated with 
little respect. Some scholars regard the Great Synagogue 
as a pure myth, and its work on the canon as imaginary. 


Others, such as Ewald, hold that the “Great Synagogue,” 


nl 


though surrounded with legendary elements, was not 
altogether mythical. We must be content to let it remain 
a dim shadowy object in the night of legalism. 

Of much greater value than Talmudic traditions of late 
origin, regarding the collecting of the sacred writings, were a 
single positive statement in a book of pre-Christian date, 


_ indicating that at the time when it was written a collection 


actually existed. Such a statement occurs in Leclesiasticus, or 

the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, the probable date of 

which is about 130 3.c. Inthe prologue of that work there is 

explicit reference to a collection consisting of three divisions : 

the Law, the Prophets, and the other national books. The 

reference occurs in such a connection as to show that 
1 Vide Oehler on the Canon in Herzog, 


318 APOLOGETICS, 


the collection had been in existence long enough to be a 
subject of study to the writer’s grandfather, and to give rise 
to a demand for translation into the Greek tongue. By — 
150 B.C. or thereby, the Hebrew Bible, if not complete as 
we have it, contained at least books in all the three cate- 
gories contained in the Old Testament canon, If any 
books were wanting at that time, they would belong to the 
last of the categories: “the other books,” “the writings.” 
If the critical view as to its late origin be correct, Daniel 
might be among the missing books. Daniel itself bears clear 
witness to the existence of a collection of the prophets, in the 
words: “I Daniel understood by the books,” ! the books being 
those in which Jeremiah’s prophecies were included. 

As the Son of Sirach is the first known witness to the 
existence of a Hebrew canon, complete at least in its 
divisions, so another well-known Jewish writer, Josephus, 
is an important witness to the contents of the canon at the 
date when he wrote, about the close of the first Christian 
century. He refers to the subject in his work against 
Apion, in connection with an attempt to show the reliable- 
ness of Hebrew history as compared with that of the 
Greeks. It may be well to quote what he says at length: 


“Therefore with us there is not an innumerable multitude 
of books contradicting each other, but only twenty-two, 
embracing the history of the whole past time, and deservedly 
regarded as divine. Of these, five are by Moses, which 
contain the law and the series of events from the creation of 
man to his death. And this space of time covers almost 
three thousand years. But from the death of Moses to the 
reign of Artaxerxes, who after Xerxes ruled over the 
Persians, the prophets who succeeded recorded the events of 
their time in thirteen, books. The four remaining books 
contain hymns in praise of God and precepts most useful for 
the life of man. But from the reign of Artaxerxes to our 
time, the events which have occurred have been preserved 
in writing, but the records have not been deemed worthy of the 
same credit, because there was no exact succession of prophets. 

1 Dan. ix. 2, 


THE OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE. 319 


But what faith we place in our Scriptures is seen from our 
conduct. No one has dared to add to them, or to take away 
from them, or to alter them. It is implanted in the mind of 
all Jews from their birth to regard them as the commands of 
God, and to abide in them,and if need be gladly die for them.” ? 


The question has been much discussed how the contents 
of the Hebrew canon as it now stands can be grouped so 
as to bring out the number twenty-two, the interest of the 
problem lying in the wish to ascertain whether all the books 
in our Hebrew Bible were included in Josephus’ list. The 
only book about which there has been any doubt is Esther. 
On the whole, it may be accepted as certain that the list of 
Josephus coincided with that of the canon of the Old 
Testament? Another point of interest in the foregoing — 
passage is the distinction drawn between the sacred writings 
and other Jewish books, and the ground of it: because 
there was no exact succession of prophets. By the time of 
Josephus the Jews had come to have a strong sense of the 
difference between canonical and non-canonical writings, 
and likewise a cut and dried theory as to the reason of 
the difference. A canonical book was a book written by 
a recognised prophet. Other books, however good, were 
refused a place in the canon, because they were not written 
under prophetic inspiration. 

This theory of Josephus raises an important question : 
What is the test of canonicity? It has been answered 
variously. One view is that that 1s canonical which the 
Church has declared to be such—which simply raises a 
previous question, What guided the Church in her judgment ? 
Another view is: that is canonical, in the case of the Old 
Testament, which had a prophet for its author, and in the 
case of the new, an apostle; but this assumes certain 
knowledge of the authors of the books and of their stand- 
ing, which in many cases is not forthcoming. Calvin, 
perceiving the unsatisfactoriness of these solutions, pro- 


1 Contra Apionem, i. 8. : 
2 Such is the view of Ryle. Vide T'te Canon, etc., chap. vii 


320 APOLOGETICS, 


posed this test: the Spirit of God in the Scripture witness- 
ing to our spirit, and giving us a sure sense of its inspiration 
and divinity, and so making us independent both of the 
authority of the Church, and of all external questions as to 
authorship. A very good test applied to the Scriptures as 
a whole, but one which fails us just when we most need 
help, viz. in reference to certain books whose canonicity 
has been disputed or seems intrinsically disputable. The 
witness of the Spirit may help us through our difficulties 
about the Gospel of John and the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
but what of Esther, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes? One 
more suggestion is possible. Find out the main drift of 
Holy Writ, and then in reference to any particular book 
that may be called in question ask, is its teaching in 
harmony therewith? In other words, a useful test of 
canonicity, if not the one test, is organic function. Does 
the particular book serve any purpose in the literature of 
revelation, is it in harmony with its design and outstanding 
doctrine? This was virtually Luther's method. In his 
hands it yielded some unsatisfactory conclusions, because 
he had too narrow a conception of the scope of the Bible, 
which he took to be the inculcation of the doctrine of 
justification by faith. That idea strictly applied would 
reduce the Bible to very small dimensions, If, however, 
our conception of the raison d’étre of Scripture be sufficiently 
comprehensive it will help us through most canonical pro- 
blems. We shall have no difficulty in seeing that the Fourth 
Gospel is an integral member in the organism of the New 
Testament, even though in doubt as to its authorship, and as 
little difficulty in deciding for the canonicity of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, though perfectly certain that it was not 
written by Paul or any-other apostle. The problems that 
remain unsolved, and leave us in permanent doubt, will be 
found to be connected with books of minor importance. 


* The book of Job by the test of canonical function has a right to its 
place, because it deals with the inevitable problem of the relation of God’s 
righteousness as Moral Governor to individual experience. It does not 


DEFECTS OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION. 321 


CHAPTER X. 


THE DEFECTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION AND ITS 
LITERATURE, 


LITERATURE. — Mozley, Ruling Ideas in Ancient Ages ; 
Ewald, Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott (Band I., English trans- 
lation by T. & T. Clark, Revelation : its Nature and Record) ; 
Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie (English translation, T. & 
T. Clark, 1892); Bruce, The Chief End of Revelation, chap. iii.; 
Driver, Lntroduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 


The remarks on the test of canonicity with which the last 
chapter closes may be held to imply that the canon is an 
open question. So in the abstract it is. It never can be 
anything else on the principles of Protestantism, which 


forbid us to accept the decisions of Church Councils, 


whether ancient or modern, as final. But, practically, 
the question of the canon is closed. Few have any 
disposition to go back on questions relating to the right of 
certain books to a place in the sacred collection. There is 
a general willingness to acquiesce in the judgments of the 
ancient Jewish and Christian Churches, even on the part 
of those who are most fully alive to the fact that there was 
a certain amount of haphazard in these judgments, and 
that they proceeded on principles which will not always 
stand close examination. As to the methods on which 
Old Testament canonical problems were disposed of we are 
very much in the dark. When, by whom, and why this 
or that particular book was admitted to the collection, and 


indeed solve the problem, but it negatives superficial solutions, and keeps 
the question open. The Song of Solomon, literally interpreted as a story of 
true love proof against the blandishments of the royal harem, is also right- 
fully in the canon as a buttress to the true religion ; for whatever made for 


purity in the relations of the sexes made for the worship of Jehovah, Baal- 


worship and impurity being closely associated. Ruth is a witness for the 
universality of God’s gracious purpose, and an antidote to the tendency of the 
elect people to hate foreigners. The same may be said of Jonah, whether 
taken as a history or as a parable. 


x 


322 APOLOGETICS. 


another was excluded, we know not. But we do know © 


something of the grounds on which the judgments of the 
Christian Church respecting New Testament books rested, 
and we know that in some instances they were very 
precarious. The most notable instance of a true judgment 
being arrived at on false or uncertain grounds is presented 
in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Western Church long 
doubted as to the right of that Epistle to a place in 
the canon, and the doubt w+- connected with the question 
of authorship. In the East, where Paul was believed to be 
directly or indirectly the au hor, it was accepted without 
hesitation as canonical; the Westerns, on the other hand, 
hesitated as to admitting its claims just because the Pauline 
authorship was not believed in. When at length a general 
vote was given in favour of the Epistle, it was on the 
understanding that it was one of Paul’s. The principle of 
judgment in such matters in those days was that canonicity 
and apostolic authorship stand and fall together. That it 
was a false principle is now generally admitted. Few 
believe that Paul wrote the Epistle, yet as few doubt that, 
tested by the principle of canonical function, it has as good 
a right to a place in the New Testament as any book in ~ 
the collection. 

What happened in the case of the New Testament 
canon may also have happened in connection with the Old 
for anything we know. We have no right to assume that 
the Hebrew canon was settled under more special divine © 
guidance than that vouchsafed to the fathers of the 
Christian Church in the performance of a similar task, 
The presumption is all the other way. The adjustment of — 
the Hebrew canon took place in the night of legalism ; 
when the canon of the New Testament was fixed the — 
Church was largely filled by the spirit of Christ. The 
possibility of wrong decisions, as, eg., in the case of the book 
of Esther, must therefore be admitted. : 

Yet, in view of all this, every one is conscious of a 
strong reluctance to reopen the question, and of a decided — 


a e 


DEFECTS OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION. eae 


inclination to accept the verdict of the Jewish Church as 
final. And acting on these feelings cannot involve any 
risk to religious interests, provided we understand our 
privilege and duty as Christians to read the Old Testament 
with a discriminating eye. » This may seem a startling 
statement, but it is one which admits of vindication not 
only with reference to books of minor value and compara- 
tively doubtful canonicity, such as Chronicles and Esther, 
but with reference to the wkele Old Testament literature. 
For it is axiomatic that that Jiferature, as the literature of 
the earlier stages of revelativz, must share the defects of 
the revelation which it recor/is and interprets. And if the 
revelation of the final stage sas done its proper work in us, 
it has enabled us to see the defects of the revelation of the 
earlier stages, and of the relative literature. The word 
which God in the end of the days spoke by One having the 
standing of a Son, must enable us, if we give sufficient heed 
to it, to read with discrimination the multiform and 
fragmentary oracles spoken to the Jewish fathers by the 
prophets, and to see clearly how true of them was the 
confession Paul made for himself, “ We prophesy im part.” 
We not only may, as men taught of Christ, so read the Old 
Testament, but we must. We cannot help ourselves, if we 
are to be loyal to the best we know. Nay, we cannot 
help ourselves, if we are really to use the Bible as a whole 
wisely, as our “rule of faith and practice.” For the Bible 
is a rule of a very peculiar kind. It is a rule that is 
constantly improving on itself, and men who use it are 
expected to take note of the fact, and to allow the later 
editions of the rule to have their own effect in antiquating 
the earlier. Thus the prophets in succession present under 
various aspects the good time coming. Their presentations 
cannot be pieced together so as to form one harmonious 
picture. They are rather like the successive stages of an 
organism, each of which in turn supersedes the one going 
before! Thus again Levitical religion for the Old Testa- 
1 Vide on this, Riehm, Messianic Prophécy, pp. 185, ete, 


324 APOLOGETICS. 


ment saint was a source of delight; the author of the 
books of Chronicles writes as if the world existed for the 
sake of the tribe of Levi, and the performance of its sacred 
functions in the temple at Jerusalem. But the writer of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, having listened to the voice of 
the Son, pronounces the whole Levitical system weak and 
unprofitable It was so, in his judgment, inherently and 
all along, even when the books of Chronicles were written. 
Can we, children of the new era of the better hope, read 
those books without feeling that more is made of the then 
prevailing system than it was all worth, and that the Phzlo- 
Levitical spirit of the writer is a religious defect, if not a 
moral fault ? 

The Christian revelation, with its relative literature, 
enables, justifies, compels us to criticise the earlier revela- 
tion and its relative literature—such is the great principle 
under law to which we must use the Old Testament as 
part of the rule of faith. The question may not unnatur- 
ally be raised, whether a guide in faith and conduct which 
thus changes, and requires us to judge earlier utterances 
by later, should be called a “rule.” The word “rule” is 
suggestive of mechanical guidance, such as a man receives 
when he is told in definite precise terms what to do, and 
no room or need is left for the exercise of his own 
judgment. The Bible is certainly not a rule in this sense. 
The man who so thinks of it will come to it in a legal 
spirit, and will get from it, not guidance, but fatal mis- 
guidance. Rabbinism is what results from using the 
Bible as a mechanical rule, a warning to all time how 
not to use the sacred book. The right use of the Bible 
requires much judgment, much spiritual insight, the 
power of appreciating its general scope, and of bringing the 
drift of the whole to bear on the interpretation of the 
parts. But the point more particularly to be insisted on — 
is that the right use of the Old Testament requires that we — 
be filled with the spirit of the New, and be able to judge ~ 

1 Heb. vii. 18, ‘ 


DEFECTS OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION. 325 


all that is written in the more ancient book in the light of 
its teaching. This amounts to saying that the Bible, 
instead of being a dead rule to be used mechanically, with 
equal value set on all its parts, is rather a living organism, 
which, like the butterfly, passes through various transforma- 
tions before arriving at its highest and final form, 
Therefore the final stage is the standard by which all is to 
be judged. This truth has two sides. It means, on the one 
hand, that we should find Christ in the Old Testament, as 
we find the butterfly in the caterpillar, and man, the crown 
of the universe, in the fiery cloud. But it means also, on 
the other hand, that we should see that the Old Testament 
is defective in so far as it comes short of Christ, as we see 
that the caterpillar is defective inasmuch as it is not yet 
a butterfly, and that the universe is an incomplete and 
comparatively meaningless thing till the evolutionary 
process has culminated in man. Hitherto the Church has 
has done ampler justice to the former aspect of the truth 
than to the latter. It has been much more alive to 
Christ’s presence in the Old Testament than to His 
absence. It has, indeed, so emphatically asserted the 
presence as almost to obliterate the traces of absence. It 
has so read Christ into the Old Testament, that the 
caterpillar becomes a butterfly before the time, and all 
sense of development, progress, growth in revelation is 
destroyed. The remark applies especially to prophecy, 
which, historically interpreted, is as a beautiful moonlight 
in the night, but in the hand of interpreters too anxious to 
put into prophetic oracles a specifically Christian meaning 
becomes like the moon in the daytime: pale, dim, and useless, 
But the remark also applies to the moral sentiments and 
religious temper of Old Testament saints as reflected in 
their writings. These are not allowed to appear defective, 


_ as they occasionally were, but are apologised for, justified, 


Pn, es mop 


transfigured, under an impression that any other mode of 
procedure would be incompatible with the reverence due 
to the word of God. Run up to its logical conclusion, 


© 826 APOLOGETICS. 


this really amounts to denying the New Testament doctrine 
of the rudimentary nature of the earlier dispensation. 
Paul compares the law to a system of tutors and governors 
under which the heir of the promise was placed during the 
period of minority. Should it surprise us to find that the 
child’s thoughts were like the system under which he lived ; 
in other words, that there are traces of the legal spirit in 
the piety of the men to whom we owe the Old Testament ? 
Why hesitate to recognise phenomena which simply serve 
to justify the judgment of the New Testament on the epoch 
of preparation? Strongly impressed with the impolicy of 
such a course, I proceed to note some of the more out- 
standing defects of Old Testament religion as reflected in 
the Hebrew Scriptures.? 

1. The prophets and many of the psalms exhibit the 
highest water-mark of the Old Testament religion. We 
have but to recall such sunny lyrics as, “ Although the 
fig-tree shall not blossom,” “Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the 
heavens,” “ Whom have I in heaven,’ “The Lord God is 
a sun and shield,” “They that wait upon the Lord shall 
renew their strength,” to be impressed with the evangelic 
spirit of the writers, and to feel that whatever shadows of 
legalism may rest on the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures, 
the joy of sonship, the religion of trust in a heavenly 
Father’s love is not unknown. Nevertheless, the spirit of 
sonship is not perfected even in those who, like the 
prophets, came nearest to the tone of New Testament 
piety. There is noticeable now and then a tone of 
complaint, as of men who do not fully understand and 
trust the loving-kindness of God. Even in the case of the 
men who sang, “ Although the fig-tree,” and “Whom have 
I in heaven,” the mood expressed in their song did not 
come easily to them. It was a victory gained in a severe 
struggle with far-reaching doubt. The prophet Habakkuk 
had despairingly asked how God could look on while 


1 In what follows I repeat in substance statements made in Thé Chief End 
of Revelation (pp. 150-7), and add some new features. 


DEFECTS OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION. 327 


deeds of barbarous cruelty were being perpetrated by 
wicked men against the just, and the Psalmist had been 
tempted by similar experiences to doubt whether God were 
good even to the pure in heart. This querwlousness, in 
view of the dark mysteries of human experience, is the 
weak side of prophetic piety. It stands in most striking 
contrast to the uniformly buoyant, invincibly triumphant 
tone of the New Testament, where it is impossible in a 
single sentence to find an echo of Jeremiah’s wail, “ Where- 
fore doth the way of the wicked prosper?”? On the 
mount, Jesus bade His hearers rejoice in sharing the fate of 
which the prophets complained: “ Rejoice, and be exceeding 
glad: for so persecuted they the prophets.”? The difference 
is not due to any natural superiority in point of heroism 
in the men of the New Testament over those of the earlier 
dispensation. It was due rather to a new way of 
regarding life which came in with Jesus Christ, in virtue 
of which the least in the kingdom of heaven became 
greater than the greatest of the prophets. The contrast 
in temper marks a real advance in the religious education 
of the world. The onward step lay in what has been aptly 
called the “method of inwardness.” The prophets (includ- 
ing among them psalmists) placed the good which marks 
God’s favour too much in outward condition. That they 
did not do this exclusively is manifest from Habakkuk’s 
song, “ Although the fig-tree shall not blossom. .. . Yet 
I will rejoice in the Lord.” Yet the method of outward- 
ness was that which came natural to the men of the Old 
Testament. The very ideal of the good time coming for 
Isaiah was just wise government and plenty of food. Nor 
was this a personal idiosyncrasy of that prophet. It arose 
directly out of the nature of the Mosaic covenant, which 
was a covenant of God with a nation, and therefore had 
for its sphere of action the political and social life of the 
people. Moses, in God's name, promised long life to 
children who honoured their parents, and national pro- 
1 Jer. xii, 1. | 3 Matt. v. 12, 


328 APOLOGETICS. 


sperity to Israel so long as she was faithful to Jehovah. 
Therefore all pious Israelites under the old covenant were 
more or less worldly in their conception of the swmmum 
bonum. Wealth, large families, long life were for them 
the appointed rewards of well-doing. For men with such 
ideas of happiness, springing directly out of the Sinaitic 
covenant, disappointments were inevitable, bringing in their 
train gloom, perplexity, doubt, a complaining temper, and 
even a mood approaching perilously near atheistic pessim- 
ism, as we see in Lcclesiastes, with its monotonous, dreary 
refrain, “Vanity of vanities”—a mood to be shunned as 
we shun poison. For the moral order of the world does 
not, with the regularity of clock-work, secure a perfect 
correspondence between lot and conduct in this world, 
either in individual or in national experience. One who 
thinks otherwise will be compelled, sooner or later, by the 
logic of events, to doubt either his own righteousness or the 
righteousness of God, or to oscillate in sickening restless- 
ness between the two kinds of doubt. Certain parts of 
the Old Testament, such as the book of Job, exhibit this 
doubt in all its length and breadth and tragic depth. It 
is their very raison @étre to exhibit it, So viewed, they 
are a very needful element in the literature of the earlier 
revelation. In them the old covenant pronounces on 
itself a verdict of failure. In this connection we can see 
how fitting it is that even that gloomy pessimistic book, 
Ecclesiastes, should have its place in the canon. It shows 
what the method of outwardness comes to, it is the method 
discredited by the process of reductio ad absurdum. No 
man with an intelligent conception of the Old Testament 
religion and its defects will quarrel with Ecclesiastes being 
retained in the canon. «The only good ground we could 
have for doing so would be the supposition that we are 
bound, if we leave it there, to sympathise with all its 
sentiments. But this supposition, as already explained, is 
a mistaken one with reference to the Old Testament in 
general, and @ fortiori with reference to that particular 


DEFECTS OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION. 329 


book. So far are the sentiments of the preacher who 
personates Solomon from being normative and authorita- 
tive, that his book is in the canon to show us rather how 
we ought not to feel. To go about the world wringing 
one’s hands, and wearing a rueful face, and erying vanitas 
vanitatum, because the preacher said it, is to miss the great 
lesson it was given him to teach. That lesson was not so 
much that adJ is vanity, as that the old Sinaitic covenant 
was vanity—proved to be vanity by allowing a son of the 
covenant to get into so despairing a mood. Jeremiah’s 
new covenant is sorely wanted when it has come to 
this. : 

A second defect in the Old Testament religion, even as 
professed by the prophets, was vindetweness. “Let me see 
Thy vengeance on them,” prays even the tender-hearted 
Jeremiah, with reference to his fellow - countrymen who 
persecuted him on account of his faithfulness ;1 and many 
similar utterances may be found in the prophetic litera- 
ture and in the Psalter. It is not for us to condemn those 
who breathed what may appear to us so unhallowed peti- 
tions, or to assume airs of superiority over them. It were 
a shame to the least in the kingdom of heaven, to any 
man living in the era of grace, if he were not better than 
the best of the Old Testament worthies in this respect. 
For a higher ideal of patience has been set before us by 
the precepts and example of Christ, and as Dr. Owen, com- 
menting on the admitted shortcomings of Old Testament 
saints, remarks: “ All our obedience, both in matter and 
manner, is to be suited to the discoveries and revelation of 
God to us’2 The vindictiveness of prophets and psalmists 
was not immorality, but crude morality: 1t was not trans- 
gression of a high standard, as the like spirit would be in 
us, but conformity with a low standard. The legal cove- 
nant allowed and even fostered, per accidens, such a spirit. 
“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for 
foot,”® said the most. ancient code of civil law given to 

lJer.xx.12.  ? Vide his treatise on the 130th Psalm. ° Ex, xxi, 24, 


330 APOLOGETICS. 


Israel. Moreover, prayer for the punishment of adver- 
saries was made almost necessary by current conceptions 
of the moral order of the world. The theory was that God 
rewarded every man according to his works. Hence not 
to punish an enemy was to pronounce a verdict in his 
favour, and against the man he had wronged. The prayer 
was an appeal to the Judge of all the earth to decide 
between the two, the wrong-doer and the wrong-sufferer. 
The injured one might be good-natured enough not to 
wish any harm to the man who had treated him unjustly, 
but he could not afford to be put in the wrong before the 
face of the world, and before the bar of his own conscience. 
It would be an intolerable thing that events should so fall 
out that he would be forced to draw the inference: God 
thinks my enemy in the right and me in the wrong. 
This, not private, vengeful passion, was the secret of the 
vindictiveness of the Old Testament saint. In many cases 
private feelings are out of the question, the prayer for 
vengeance being uttered really in the name of the whole 
community of Israel. This remark applies, probably, to 
many of the so-called vindictive psalms.? 

All this may truly be said by way of apology for the 
vindictive element in Old Testament literature. Neverthe- 
less there it is, as an undeniable fact; and while Christians 
are not called on to sit in judgment on it in a spirit of 
self-complacency, as little are they called on to deny its 
existence, still less to approve and imitate it, or to cite it 
as Scripture sanction for cherishing vindictive passions. 
Such a use of Old Testament Scripture, not unexampled in 
Christian times, is barbarous, disgraceful, and disloyal to 
the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Of the defects of the Zaw, as contained in the Penta- 


teuch, it is unnecessary to treat at length. Christ has 


said all that needs to be said on the crudity of the civil 

legislation ascribed to Moses. His criticism is given in 

few words, but it cuts deep. “Ye have heard that it hath 
1 Vide chap. vii. p. 274. 


~ 


yoo 


DEFECTS OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION. sol 


been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but 
I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.” By this one 
sentence He constituted Himself a critic of the Mosaic 
civil code, and made it appear a crude kind of justice 
adapted to a morally rude condition of society. What He 
implied in the Sermon on the Mount He expressly said on 
another occasion, pronouncing the Mosaic statute of divorce 
a law adapted to a hard inhuman heart. One who has 
learned of Christ can apply the principle for himself, and 
see that much in Israel’s statute-book was destined to 
abrogation when the new covenant came, bringing the 
renewed heart and the perfect law of love written on the 
heart. 

The literature of the post-exilic period, when, according to 
the critics, the Levitical code first came into full operation, 
exhibits defects springing out of the system under which it 
arose, shadows cast on the sacred page by the Judaism 
inaugurated by Ezra. The literature referred to includes 
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and some of the Psalms. 
Three defects may be noted here: Philo -Leviticalism, an 
exclusive, hostile attitude towards foreigners, and a tendency 
to morbid self-consciousness, or self-rightcousness. 

The first of these defects is conspicuous in the books of 
First and Second Chronicles. The Philo-Levitical spirit of 
the writer has already more than once been adverted to, 
and it is not necessary to add much here to what has been 
said. That the author of these books was devoted to the 
temple and its ritual must be manifest to every one who 
takes the trouble to read them with attention. That in 
itself was the reverse of a fault. What is to be specially 
noted is the excess or exclusiveness of the interest. 
David’s sins are passed over in silence, and even his ser- 
vices to his country as a warrior and a secular prince are 
hurriedly narrated, and he appears in these pages chiefly 
as a man occupied with preparations for building the 
temple, and the organisation of worship on the Levitical 

1 Matt. v. 38, 39. 2 Matt. xix.8; Markx.5. * Vide pp. 279, 281, 


332 APOLOGETICS, 


model. The omissions and the foreshortening may be said 
to be due to the point of view, but the thing to be 
remarked is the point of view itself and what it implies, 
Leviticalism fills the mind of the writer. Ritual is not 
only co-ordinate with righteousness, but it almost seems to 
be the one thing needful. Devotion to the temple service 
is apparently the grand requirement. It is not to be 
supposed, indeed, that the chronicler is indifferent to moral 
interests, that he thinks and means to suggest that it does 
not matter what sins a man commits, though, like David, 
he be guilty of adultery and murder, provided always he 
be duly attentive to the technical duties of religion. Such 
an impious sentiment is not in all his thoughts, Yet, in 
his zeal for religious interests, he presents a picture of 
David’s life from which such an inference might plausibly 
be drawn. <A prophet like Amos or Isaiah could not have 
written Chronicles, They had such a passion for righteous- 
ness, such a keen sense of the worthlessness of religion 
divorced from morality, that they could not have brought 
themselves to write a sketch of David’s career, in which all 
the black features were left out and only his zeal for God’s 
worship eulogised. We are in a different atmosphere 
here from that we breathe on the mountain heights of 
Hebrew prophecy. It is the incense-laden air of the 
sanctuary, not the bracing air which blows over the Alpine 
heights of duty.} 

Traces of a proud national self-consciousness, combined 
with exclusiveness towards foreigners, have been discovered 
by critics in most of the books belonging to the post-exilic 
period. Before referring to texts cited in proof of this, it 
may be proper to point out that this defect in the reli- 
gious temper of the Jews.after the time of Ezra is not to 
be confounded with the vindictiveness already mentioned. 


1 The question has been discussed whether the chronicler followed a tradi- 
tion, wrote under the spontaneous influence of the contemporary spirit of 
religion modifying history, or was guided by a conscious didactic aim. 
Schultz decides for the third alternative. Vide Alttestamentliche Theologie, 
p. 70. 


a 


DEFECTS OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION. 330 


That feeling is a desire for redress for wrong done, and as 
such it may be cherished against Israelites as well as non- 
Israelites. The feeling now to be considered is one of 
aversion to non-Israelites as such, simply as “aliens from 
the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the cove- 
nants of promise.” It might proceed either from pride 
or from fear. In the days of our Lord it certainly sprang 
mainly from pride. The religious Jews of that time, 
proudly conscious of their covenant relation to God, 
regarded the heathen world with haughty disdain. This 
was what came of election, misunderstood to mean a 
monopoly of God’s favour: a sullen, proud, narrow-hearted 
hatred of the human race. The question is, Can any trace 
of this vice be discovered in the period covered by the 
latest canonical books, or of any feeling akin to it, or 
capable of being developed into it? Not certainly, it may 
be said in the first place, in the action of Ezra and 
Nehemiah in insisting on separation from heathen wives, 
and in refusing to have fellowship with the Samaritans. 
These might be measures of mistaken severity, but they 
were prompted not by pride, but by fear of contamination. 
Further, aversion to foreigners, from whatever cause pro- 
ceeding, is certainly not the sole prevailing tone of the 
post-exilic literature. As pointed out in a previous 
chapter, there is a hearty ring of universalism in some of 
the Psalms ;1 and if the critics are right in assigning a late 
date to the books of Ruth and Jonah, these also are wit- 
nesses to the existence among the Jews after the captivity 
of a genial kindly feeling towards the outside peoples? A 
third remark may be hazarded, viz. that if even so much 
as a germ of the Pharisaic feeling towards the Gentile 
world can be detected in the later books, it would not 
present itself to the consciousness of the writer as it may 


1 Vide chap. vii. pp. 273, 274. 

* Schultz suggests that possibly we should see in Jonah and Ruth a 
reaction against the spirit which dictated Ezra’s reform. Alttestamentliche 
Theologie, p. 417, 


334 APOLOGETICS. 


appear to us in the light of the New Testament. He did 
not wish to express proud contempt or abhorrence of 
heathendom, but only a thankful sense of privilege and 
distinction, not to be boasted of, but to be gratefully 
acknowledged to the praise of divine grace. The limitation 
of spirit is there, but it is a defect arising out of the legal 
system which wholly tended in the direction of isolation ; 
not a vice of nature, or an unworthy passion of an unlov- 
ing, selfish heart. 

Traces of national self-consciousness as against a godless 
heathen world have been discovered by such comparatively 
circumspect writers as Schultz in most of the books 
assigned to the post-exilic literature. In certain of the 
Psalms, eg. the 74th, in which Israel is called God’s turtle- 
dove, and the heathen are described as a foolish people. 
In Daniel, where the land of Israel is frequently called 
“the glorious land,”* and the people of Israel are desig- 
nated as “the saints of the Most High.”3 In Chronicles, 
where even the kingdom of the ten tribes seems to be 
treated as a heathen country, and as such all but ignored 
as not worthy of a place in the history of God’s people; 
and where the misfortunes of kings of Judah, as of 
Jehoshaphat in connection with his shipping enterprise, 
are traced to alliances with heretical kings of Israel. In 
Esther above all, where the vindictive spirit against 
heathen foes reaches a ferocity difficult to account for 
otherwise than by regarding it as an outbreak of unre- 
strained natural passion against persons who, as belonging 
to the goim, were not supposed to have any claims to 
humane treatment.5 

In the Pharisaic character a proud self-consciousness as 

1 Verses 18 and 19. ‘: 2 Chap. viii. 9, xi. 16, 41. 

8 Chap. vii. 18, 21, 25, 27. 

“2 Chron. xx. 35. The explanation of the disaster given by the writer is 
all the more remarkable that in the corresponding narrative in 1 Kings 
xxii. 49 Ahaziah asks permission to join in the venture, and Jehoshaphat 


refuses, 
* Vide on all these and other texts, Schultz, pp. 415-419. With reference 


“ , ¥oee A 


DEFECTS OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION. 335 


towards the heathen world was accompanied with an 
equally proud self-consciousness as towards God. Is there 
any trace of the latter feeling in the later literature of the 
Hebrew canon? We should not be surprised if there 
were; for Judaism, laying so much stress on ritual, did 
tend to develop that outward formal type of righteousness 
with which self-satisfaction is apt to be associated. The 
appearance of such traces in canonical books of the 
Judaistic period would only serve to advertise the fact 
that Israel’s religion had entered on a _ phase. which 
involved certain spiritual perils, and to prepare us for the 
state of matters with which the Gospels make us 
acquainted. Now as to the question of fact, it would 
seem that, while there is no trace of inculcation of self- 
righteousness, there are some unconscious manifestations 
of what wears a suspicious resemblance to it, in the 
characters of the men who come under our notice at this 
period. I have already had occasion to remark on the 
peculiar tone of Nehemiah’s prayers, a phenomenon which 
attracted my attention many years ago, when I should 
hardly have felt at liberty to pursue such a line of thought 
as that which occupies us in the present chapter. Those 
ejaculatory petitions, “Remember me, O my God, for 
good,” struck me then as they strike me now, as something 
novel, something needing explanation, something not quite 
in keeping with Pauline ideas of justification. I have also 
alluded to the consciousness of perfect national rectitude 
expressed in the 44th Psalm, in the words, “ All this is 
come upon us; yet have we not forgotten Thee, neither 
have we dealt falsely in Thy covenant. Our heart is not 
turned back, neither have our steps declined from Thy 
way.”? This is not necessarily self-righteousness, for there 
to Esther, Driver (Introduction, p. 457) remarks: ‘‘It must be admitted 
that the spirit of Esther is not that which prevails generally in the Old 
Testament ; but we have no right to demand upon a priori grounds, that in 
every part of the biblical record the human interests of the narrator should 


in the same degree be subordinated to the spirit of God.” 
1 Verses 17, 18. 


336 APOLOGETICS, 


is such a thing as suffering for righteousness’ sake in 
national as in individual experience. Yet the utterance 
stands in striking contrast to the prophetic habit of 
thought, and it is possible that the Psalmist speaks out of 
the consciousness of a time when holiness was placed too 
much in compliance with sacrificial rites and ceremonial 
rules, and not enough in doing justice, loving mercy, and 
walking humbly with God.! 

These and other defects? of Old Testament piety present 
no stumbling-block to intelligent Christian faith. They 
only help to make it evident that God, who in many parts 
and many modes had spoken to Israel by prophets and 
psalmists, had not yet uttered His final, because perfect, 
word. They show that the Hebrew Scriptures, while a 
true light from heaven, were but a light shining in a dark 
place until the dawn of day. 

1 In this passage, as also in Ps. vii. 9, 10, xvii. 2-5, xxvi. 1-5, Cheyne 
(Bampton Lectures on the Psalter, p. 369) finds ‘‘ professions of innocence 
which are at variance with the normal Christian sentiment.” 

* The food of Daniel and his companions at the king’s court has been 
supposed to indicate the ascetic spirit as an element in the Jewish religion 
at the time the book was written. In reference to the whole religious spirit 
of Judaism at this period, Schultz remarks: ‘‘ Die Religion wird mehr zum 


Gesetze. Aus der Sittlichkeit wird das Vollbringen der Gesetzen-werke.” 


He refers in proof to 1 Chron. v. 25, x. 10, xiii. 10, xxviii. 7, xxix. 19; 
Esther iv. 8, 16 (fasting, etc.) ; Ps. clxix. 164 (prayer seven times a day) ; 


Dan. i. 8-16 (ascetic abstinence), vi. 10 (methodised prayer), 


i= at 


pa 


BOOK IIL 


THE CHRISTIAN ORIGINS. 


CHAPTER L 
JESUS. 


LITERATURE.— The Lives of Jesus by Farrar, Geikie, Keim, 
Weiss, Renan, etc.; Bruce, The Kingdom of God, 4th ed.; 
Dale, The Living Christ and the Four Gospels; Stearns, The 
Emdence of Christian Experience (the Ely Lectures for 1890) ; 


i Herrmann, Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott, 2te Aufl. 1892 ; 


Gore’s Bampton Lectures on the Incarnation, Lecture VI.; 
I. H. Green, Works, vol. iii, Essay on “ Christian Dogma”; 


_ Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus (T. & T. Clark, 1892). 


Jesus of Nazareth is represented in the Gospels as the 


Christ, the Godlike King of Hebrew prophecy, the fulfiller 
of Israel’s highest hopes and brightest ideals, the august 
_ Person in whom the history of the chosen people cul- 


minated, and the divine purpose in her election found its 
consummation and interpretation. And the Christian 
Church in every age has accepted this representation as 
true; that the man Jesus was all this is her firm faith. 


_ But if Jesus was the Christ, Christ was also Jesus, a man 


who lived in Palestine at a certain date, of very unique 


moral and religious character, and very welcome for His 


own sake, apart altogether from His relation to the previous 


_ history of the world in general, or of Israel in particular. 
_And there are moods of mind in which one desires to look 


XY 


338 APOLOGETICS. 


at the man apart from His official titles and dignities, just 
as one might go to Palestine desiring to see what the naked 
eye can see, forgetting for the time all the sacred historical 
memories connected with its hills, and valleys, and lakes, 
and streams. There are probably many in the present 
time who are in this mood. The title “ Christ” sounds 
foreign and stale to their ear, and is suggestive only of 


a 


religious delusion, the symbol of an extinct Aberglaube, or — 


extra-belief. But the Jesus to whom it was applied still 
interests them. In spite of theological scepticism—nay, 
partly in consequence of it, the conviction remains, and 
gains in force, that the hero of the evangelic story is the 
sweetest, most winsome, and most powerful character in 
the whole history of humanity. They desire to become 
better acquainted with Him. They wish to know the real 
historical person called Jesus of Nazareth, being persuaded 
that the better He is known in the actual truth of His life 


the better He will be esteemed. They are impatient of — 


the trappings with which faith has invested His person, 
the official robes and the aureole round his brow. Take 
these things away, they exclaim; we would see Jesus. 
There need be no quarrel with this mood, or any un- 
willingness to let it have its way. We are, of course, all 
aware that it is a very crude sort of Christianity that looks 
at Jesus apart from His connection with the antecedent 
history of His people. Marcionism, with its Jesus in the 


air, cannot be more than a stepping-stone to a higher and * 
more abiding form of faith. But that it may be; that, for — 
those in the mood described, it must be. You cannot — 


make them Christians by the method of catechetical in- 
struction intended to fill the mind with orthodox opinions. 


Neither can you make*them Christians by the method of — 


evangelism, which, taking for granted conventional ortho- 


doxy, makes its appeal to the emotions. These methods ¥ 


have probably both been tried, and have failed. They 


must therefore be allowed to begin at the beginning, and — 


to learn Christianity de novo, as the disciples of Jesus 


7 ae 
Sati) 
fess 7. eaney. 
2" A 


JESUS. 339 


learned it; becoming acquainted first with the man, and 
then advancing gradually to higher views of His person 
and work. It is a slow process at the best, and there is 
a risk of its stopping short at the rudimentary stage; but 
when it goes on to its consummation, it yields a far higher 
type of faith and discipleship than can be reached by any 
short and easy way. Let an inquirer first see the man 
Jesus, and love Him so seen, and then pass on to higher 
affirmations with full intelligence and perfect sincerity, 
and you shall find in him one who brings to the service 
of the kingdom of God, not opinion merely, or emotion, 
but the whole heart and mind: “all that is within” 
him. 

This being so, it would seem as if the way of becoming 
a Christian just indicated were not only the way necessary 
to be taken in certain cases, but the desirable way in all 
cases. It is not, and never will be, the way of the majority, 
and yet it may be the better and the best way. That it 
is so, indeed, might be asserted with confidence on the 
authority of the Master. His method of dealing with men 
in quest of the highest good seems to have been in accord- 
ance with that indicated as the ideally best. He did not 
come with all His claims and titles, and make recognition 
of these the first condition of discipleship. He was in no 
haste to get men to make correct religious affirmations 
concerning Himself, but rather took pains first to lay sound 
moral foundations of religious belief. He not only did not 
demand that candidates for discipleship should commence 
by calling Him Christ, Lord, God, Saviour, but He posi- 
tively discouraged the use of all such titles till men had 
an approximately correct idea of their significance. At 
Ceesarea Philippi, when Peter made the confession, “Thou 
art the Christ,’ He charged His disciples that they should 
tell no man that He was the Christ." That is, He wanted 
no man to call Him Christ who did not in some degree 
understand the true meaning of the title, but used it im a 

1 Matt, xvi, 20. 


340 APOLOGETICS. 


merely traditional sense. To the seeker after eternal life 
who accosted Him as “ Good Master,’ He addressed the 
sharp interrogation, “ Why callest thou me good?” as if to 
say, make not goodness a matter of compliment; call no 
man good till you know what goodness is, and whether the 
person to whom you apply the epithet deserves it. Yet, 
while virtually advising this inquirer to suspend his judg- 
ment as to the applicability of the epithet “good” to 
Himself, Jesus, we note, invites him to immediate disciple- 
ship: “Go, sell that thou hast, and come, follow me.” Had 
he complied with the invitation, he would gradually have 
learned the nature of true goodness, and that the Master he 
had chosen as his guide was indeed good. He would also 
have learned betimes to make important religious affirmations 
concerning the Master, such as that He was the Christ, or 
the Son of God. And these affirmations coming in due 
course would have had real value and life-giving power. 
It could bring no real benefit to him to call Jesus either 
good or God while he remained in ignorance of the spirit 
of Jesus, and was so far unacquainted with the nature of 
true goodness. as to imagine, for example, that the Pharisees 
and the Rabbis were good. It can do no one good to call 
an unknown man God; still less to apply that solemn 
designation to a man whose character and spirit are fatally 
misconceived. The virtue lies in the belief that God is 
like, yea is, the well-known man Jesus the Good? 

It thus appears that Christ’s sanction might fairly be 
cited in support of the policy of postponing consideration 
of His higher claims, and making it the first business to 
become intimately and truly acquainted with the historical 


1 Mark x. 18. In the corresponding passage in Matthew Christ’s ques- 
tion, according to the best reading, was: ‘‘ Why askest thou me concerning 
the good?” The discrepancy in the reports raises the question which version 
comes nearest to what Jesus actually said. I content myself with saying 
that the question put into Christ’s mouth by Mark and Luke is very charac- 
teristic, true to Christ’s whole manner of dealing with religious inquirers 
and aspirants to discipleship. 

* Vide my Kingdom of God, 4th ed, chap. xv. 


JESUS, 341 


person so far as that is possible. The desire to know the 
Jesus of history, stripped bare of theological investiture, 
far from being an impiety, is a reversion to the method of 
the Author of our faith. This consideration may encourage 
men adrift on the sea of doubt to be thorough in their search 
for truth without fear of consequences. Hecate fears of 
eternal loss are a great hindrance to thoroughness in religion. 
What if I should die while the quest goes on, and truth 
is still not found? What if I should be launched into 
eternity when I have only reached the lowest stage of 
Christian belief, the sincere passionate conviction that 
Jesus of Nazareth was a good man, the one man I have 
known whom I could trust and love with all my heart ? 
Must I not make myself safe by hastily patching up my 
sadly-tattered creed, and accepting in the slump all con- 
ventional, orthodox declarations concerning the Person of 
Jesus and the significance of His death? “ Who is among 
you that feareth the Lord” and “walketh in darkness?” 
Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and abstain from 
kindling for himself fires in the night that shall blaze 
brightly for a while, then go out and leave him in deeper 
darkness. Let him be loyal to truth, and leave his soul 
in the hands of God. How foolish to think that one can 
save himself from the living God, searcher of hearts, by an 
orthodox system of theology hastily adopted for prudential 
reasons! And why entertain solicitudes to which Jesus 
was a stranger? He did not bid men hurry up and make 
haste to be orthodox, under pain of damnation if death 
overtook them while they were only on the way, and not 
at the goal. He acted as if He believed that men were in 
a saved condition when their face was turned in the right 
direction—toward God, truth, and righteousness, Saas 
far they might be from having attained the object of their 
quest. The prodigal had a far way to go to his father’s 
house, but in the view of Jesus he was a new man from 
the moment he said, “I will arise, and go to my father.” 
But the question may be raised, Has the method of 


Ee, APOLOGETICS. 


learning Christianity recommended by Jesus not been 
rendered difficult or impossible by the way in which His 
first disciples have treated His life? The question con- 
cerns the historicity of the evangelic narratives. It may be 
said, it has recently been said with startling emphasis, that 
none of the Gospels, not even those which are compara- 
tively trustworthy,—the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and 
Luke —are written in a historical spirit, by men whose 
first concern was to ascertain facts and report them exactly, 
but rather with the avowed purpose of verifying a religious 
belief concerning the subject of the narrations. The evan- 
gelists, it is held, were concerned supremely, not about the 
facts, but about the religious significance of the facts. And 
they have taken no pains to keep the facts and their value 
for faith apart, so that readers might have it in their 
power to know intimately the man Jesus, before being 
asked or expected to make any theological affirmations 
concerning Him, such as that He was the Christ. 

Now it must be admitted that there is a measure of 
truth in this representation. Fact and faith are blended 
together in all the Gospels, and can only be separated by 
a critical process; and for one who handles the materials 
in a purely scientific spirit without religious prepossessions, 
it may in some instances remain doubtful how far the 
statements of the evangelists can be accepted as historical. 
But it is very possible to indulge in exaggeration here, 
and it may confidently be affirmed that the sceptical or 
agnostic temper has been carried to excess in connection 
with the history of Jesus. We are all apt to be uncon- 
sciously influenced by our bias. If some are too ready to 
receive with uncritical credence the things that are written 
in the Gospels, others are far too suspicious, whether 
biassed, as in the case of Mr. Huxley, by a severely 
scientific habit of mind, or, as in the case of Dr. Martineau, 
by a theory as to the inner light being the sole source of 
revelation. When a man happens to believe that he can 
do without an objective light of the world, he can afford to 


re. . 


JESUS. 343 


be very sceptical as to the existence of such a light,— 
nay, if he be in a small minority in maintaining the 
sufficiency of the inner light, he may be tempted to raise 
a mist of doubt about the sun that no alternative may be 
left but to trust in the guidance of the candle. 

To open-minded men neither unduly dogmatic nor unduly 
sceptical, a sufficient knowledge of the historical Jesus will 
not seem unattainable. That such knowledge is possible is 
a fair inference from the fact that so many have attempted 
to write the Life of Jesus. Some indeed, such as Strauss, 
have written in a predominantly sceptical spirit, having for 
their leading aim to show that of the subject of the evan- 
gelic story little can be known. But others, such as Keim, 
entirely free from orthodox prepossessions, and proceeding 
on the principles of a naturalistic philosophy, have entered 
on their task with the conviction that the Gospels contain 
a large amount of genuinely historical material, and by the 
literary result of their studies have succeeded in producing 
a similar conviction in the minds of their readers. Even 
without the aid of elaborate “ Lives of Jesus,” a candid 
inquirer may attain a comfortable sense of the knowable- 
ness of Jesus, by an unaided use of the Gospels. In 
reading these memoirs you feel as one sometimes feels in 
a picture gallery. Your eye alights on the portrait of a 
person you do not know. You look at it intently for a 
few moments, and then you remark to a companion, that 
must be like the original, it is so real, so life-like. This 
sense of verisimilitude has at least subjective if not ob- 
jective value. It stimulates to further inquiry, and creates 
the needful hope and patience for its successful prosecution. 

This feeling of reality may not be produced in the same 
degree by all the four Gospels. It is indeed, as is well 
known, in not a few instances confined to the Synoptical 
Gospels, which by comparison with the Fourth have appeared 
to many in a marked degree stamped with an aspect of 
historicity, This prejudice against the Fourth Gospel, so 
far as it is sympathised with by any one in quest of a veri 


344 ‘APOLOGETICS, 


table knowledge of Christ, may be provisionally utilised as 
a means of confirming his first impression regarding the 
other three. No candid man will allow the prejudice to 
settle down without further inquiry into a final judgment 
as to the claims of that Gospel to be a reliable source of 
knowledge concerning the work and teaching of Jesus, 
But till the Johannine problem is solved the inquirer may 
legitimately extract aid to a weak faith even from the 
diversity of the impressions made upon his mind by the 
different sources. Do the Synoptical Gospels seem to him 
to present a real unmistakably historical character, reserv- 
ing doubts about details, in particular about the miraculous 
element connected with the birth, the public ministry, and 
the resurrection? On the other hand, does the Fourth 
Gospel, even in those portions in which no miraculous 
element is present, convey the impression of a personality 
noble but idealised? Let him use the contrast, not indeed 
as conclusively proving the ideality of the Johannine 
Christ, but as a means of strengthening his sense of the 
reality of the Synoptical Christ. The very consciousness 
of contrast is evidence that the critical spirit is at work, 
and that the impression of the verisimilitude of the Synopti- 
cal Christ is not a baseless caprice. / 

It is open to us to confirm our faith in the historicity of 
the Synoptical Jesus by another line of comparison. It is 
familiar to all readers of the New Testament how very 
few allusions to facts in the life of Jesus are contained 
in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. By a careful search 
one might discover more than, after a hasty perusal, he 
expects; nevertheless the broad fact remains that Paul is 
nearly as sparing in his references to the Great Biography 
as he is to the scenery of the various countries he passed 
through on his missionary journeys. Two facts only in 
the history of Jesus seem to have interest for him: the 
crucifixion and the resurrection; and these possess interest 
to his mind not as mere facts, but on account of their 
momentous religious significance. He appears to care 


JESUS. 845 


nothing for what we call the Life of Jesus, but only for 
the doctrine of Christ’s atoning work and Divine Per- 
sonality. His interest in Christ is purely religious, not at 
all biographical, and his presentation of Christ is dominated 
throughout by theological ideas. 

With the synoptical evangelists the case is far otherwise. 
Their interest is by no means purely or even predominantly 
dogmatic: they love to tell stories about Jesus which show 
what manner of man He was, how He appeared from day 
to day to His chosen companions. The materials collected 
in their Gospels owe their origin to a different type of mind 

_ from that of Paul. They bear witness to the existence 
in the Palestine Church of a “simple healthy objectivity 
which desired to know the facts about Christ, to ascertain 
as far as possible what He said and did, to get a clear vivid 
picture of His life and human personality.”* If the com- 
panions of Jesus and those to whom they preached had 
been as intensely subjective as Paul, and as preoccupied 
with a few great ideas, these memoirs of the Lord would 
never have come into existence. And that they were not 
so preoccupied these memoirs sufficiently attest. For while 
they do not possess the character of a colourless chronicle 
uninfluenced by faith, they are certainly by comparison 
-with Paul’s letters very lacking in what we may call the 
theological interest. They contain little more than theo- 
logical germs, the mere rudiments of a doctrine of atone- 
ment, or of Christ’s Person, or of the Church. From the 
point of view of the dogmatic theologian this feature of 
the Synoptical Gospels may be disappointing. Indeed, it 
may be said with some measure of truth that the low 
doctrinal position of these Gospels has led to their being 
largely neglected in favour of the more theological writings 
of the great apostle of the Gentiles: a neglect which has 
brought upon the Church, especially on the Protestant 
section of it, a serious penalty in the form of spiritual 
impoverishment. But not to dwell on this, what I wish 

1 The Kingdom of God, 4th ed. p. 335. 


346 APOLOGETICS. 


now to point out is that that very feature of the Gospels 
which makes them disappointing to the dogmatist, is of 
great value to the apologist. Broadly put, the apologetic 
position is this: the less dogmatic presumably the more 
historical. Are the Synoptical Gospels deficient in materials 
for the construction of a system of Christian doctrines ? 
Then the fair inference is that the evangelists were not 
supremely concerned about theology, but had it for their 
chief desire to give a vivid true picture of Jesus as He 
appeared to the men who had been with Him. 

On these grounds the earnest inquirer may with all con- 
fidence trust his first impressions of the Synoptical Gospels, 
and come to them in good hope of acquiring a true knowledge 
of the historic Jesus. They will find there facts abund- 
antly sufficient for the exhibition of a character of unique 
moral and religious worth which is no invention, but one 
worked out on the stage of real life. The best thing they 
can do for their spiritual wellbeing is to go to the school 
of the evangelists and learn of Jesus. If they truly desire 
eternal life, this is their wise course. They will there learn 
at once the nature of true goodness, and what solid 
grounds there are for calling Jesus uniquely good. These — 
are the first two lessons in the Christian religion, the — 
foundation of all that follows, as our Lord declared by 
implication when He asked the aspirant, Why callest thou 
me good? He did not, as some supposed, mean thereby 
to imply that He was conscious of moral defect. His aim 
rather was to give a first lesson in the way to eternal life. 
In effect the question meant: learn first of all what good- 
ness is, and call no man good till you are sure that he 
deserves it. The practical way to work out this programme 
was to become a disciple of Jesus. In His company the | 
inquirer would solve two problems at one stroke: discover 
the nature of the highest good, and perceive at the same 
time that the ideal of goodness was realised in the Master 
whom he followed. 

The question, What is good? is always one demanding — 


JESUS. 347 


careful discriminating consideration. At no time is it safe 
to assume the accuracy of conventional notions on that sub- 
ject. Least of all was it safe in the time of Jesus. There 
were two competing types of goodness in Judea, then, 
between which men had to choose, that of Jesus and that 
of the scribes. What a difference! how utterly incom- 
patible, how idle to call any man “good” until it was 
settled which of the two types was to be preferred! The 
thoughts and ways of Jesus, it is as certain as anything can 
be, differed radically from those of most of His Jewish con- 
temporaries on all subjects pertaining to morals and religion. 
Righteousness, goodness, both theoretically and practically, 
was quite another thing for Him from what it was for them. 
The righteousness of the Rabbis consisted in observing 


innumerable minute rules regarding washing, fasting, tithe- 


paying, Sabbath-keeping, and the like, in being very self- 
complacent on account of their observances, and in think- 
ing very meanly of all who were not as strict as themselves, 
Scrupulosity, vanity, and contempt made up the current 
type of goodness as embodied in the Pharisaic character, 
In the character of Jesus, as most realistically portrayed 
in the Gospels, we meet with a startling contrast. There is 
not only a total lack of conformity to the Pharisaic type, 


_ but a very pronounced antipathy to it. This indeed is the 


25% 
1. 


foremost feature in the new type of goodness, an intense 
detestation of counterfeit goodness. Jesus, as He appears 
in the Gospels, was gentle and charitable beyond expres- 
sion; yet His abhorrence of spurious holiness amounted 
to a passion. What He detested He was not likely to 
imitate, and accordingly in no particular did His righteous- 
ness resemble that of the scribes and Pharisees. He was, 


_ for example, entirely free from religious scrupulosity, as we 


see from His mode of keeping the Sabbath, and from His 
neglect of the traditionary rules of the scribes respecting 
ablutions, fastings, etc. This free way of life was not, as 
many imagined, licentiousness, but a better way of serving 
God springing out of a different idea of God from that 


348 APOLOGETICS. 


cherished by the scribes. The scribes had no real faith 
in the goodness or grace of God. They thought of God as 
a severe, exacting taskmaster, whose commands were not 


only high and difficult, but grievous. Hence they served : 


Him in fear, lest by the most minute departure, even by 
inadvertence, from the bare letter of the law they should 
incur the divine displeasure with its attendant penalties, 


Jesus, on the contrary, had the most absolute faith in God’s 


benignity. He loved God as a Father, and served Him as 


a Son, cheerfully, devotedly, and without dread, regarding - 


His will as good and perfect and acceptable, and not doubt- 


ing that He judged conduct reasonably, setting value not 


on outward conformity to mechanical rules, but on the 


inward spirit. The Rabbis feared that God would be angry ; 


if they did not pay their tithes with such scrupulous exact- 


ness as to include among the taxable articles garden herbs, — 


To Jesus such fear appeared a foolish superstition and an 
injury to God. It was incredible to Him that God could 
be angry with men for such a reason. He believed that 
God’s displeasure rested on selfishness, pride, cruelty, 


injustice, falsehood, not on petty breaches of man-made — 


rules invented to be a hedge about the law. 


Again, and above all, the goodness of Jesus was dis- | 
tinguished from the current type by its humanity. One — 


of His chief grounds of quarrel with the traditional type of 


goodness was that it was inhuman, did not care for the — 


people, but despised them as ignorant and profane, and 


contemplated their moral degradation with heartless apathy — 


and even calm satisfaction. He, for His part, loved the people 


dearly, pitied them, sought their good by all means, taught ; 


them, healed them, kept company with them, took food in 
their houses, exposing’ Himself in so doing to suspicion, 
misunderstanding, and calumnious mispresentation ; regard- 
less of the evil that might be thought or said about Himself, 
if only He might by such brotherliness comfort, gladden, 


and win to goodness the depressed, the unfriended, and the — 


erring. 


a; —.. 
ae 


JESUS. 349 


Ounce more Jesus stood in conspicuous contrast to the 


_ fharisee by His modesty. This trait came out in the 


question, Why callest thou me good? expressive, not, 
indeed, of the sense of moral defect, but certainly of 
reverence for the august moral Ideal. What a shock of 
surprise the question must have given the young man 
familiar with the ways of the scribes! It was not their 
habit to decline titles of honour. They loved to be called 
“Rabbi.” Vanity, ostentation, thirst for flattery were con- 
spicuous vices of their religious character. Jesus testified 
of them that they did all their works to be seen of men, 


that they loved uppermost rooms at feasts, the chief seats 


in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets. His 


- own way how different! He did not pray at the street 


corner but in the mountain solitude when men were asleep. 
He withdrew into the wilderness from popular applause. 
He said to His intimates, Tell no man that I am Christ. 
The Pharisees let their light shine so that it glorified 
themselves. Jesus let His light shine so that, while 
glorifying God and benefiting men, it brought to Himself 
reproach, blasphemy, crucifixion. Of a ‘life having such 


_ issues a higher principle than vanity was the spring: the 


stern sense of duty, lowly self-suppressing love to men. 
Here was a type of goodness worth admiring and imita- 


ting, set forth, not in theory, but in a living practice. Now 


we know what to say in answer to the question, Why 


callest thou Jesus Good? We call Jesus Good because 


He abhorred counterfeit sanctity, served His Father with 
filial liberty and devotion, loved men even unto death, and 
shunned ostentation. We have good, solid, historical 
grounds for so thinking of Him, The evangelists had no 
inducement for exhibiting Him in this light except that 


_ the fact was so. On the contrary, the temptation of the 
_ Apostolic Church, as time went on, was to tone down the 


controversial aspect of Christ’s character, and to exhibit 
His goodness apart from the shadows which bring its dis- 
tinctive qualities into bright relief. The error and mis- 


350 APOLOGETICS. 


fortune of later ages has been to lose clear perceptions of 
the real Jesus to the extent of well-nigh becoming insen- 
sible to the difference between His goodness and the 
counterfeit presentation. For this loss of true insight into 
Christ's human character higher views of His Person cannot 
compensate. On the contrary, a faded humanity means 
a divinity evacuated of its contents. It is of no avail, 
I must repeat, to call an unknown man, still less a 
misconceived man, God. God is a Spirit, not merely 
ontologically but ethically, and of what quality His spirit 
is the man Jesus declares. God is love, and what divine 
love means the ministry of Jesus in life and death shows. 
God is good in the specific sense of being gracious, generous, 
philanthropic, and the historic life of Jesus interprets for 
us the philanthropy of God. All we really know of God in 
spirit and in very truth we know through Jesus; but only 
on condition that we truly know Jesus Himself as revealed 
to us in the pages of the evangelic history. Knowledge of 
the historical Jesus is the foundation at once of a sound 
Christian theology and of a thoroughly healthy Christian life. 
Holding this view, I cannot regard with favour the 
tendency visibly at work in the present time to make 
Christianity as far as possible independent of history. In — 
view of prevailing agnosticism, this tendency is very 
natural. When men are loudly and confidently saying: It | 
is impossible to know what the facts are as to the life of © 
Jesus, we cannot be sure of much more than that He 
lived in Judea at a certain time, and taught unpopular — 
views on morals and religion, and in consequence suffered — 
a violent death; it is natural that believers should reply: 
Our faith is independent of the uncertainties of the evan- 
gelic story; we can -get our Christianity by a short and | 
easy method, without troubling ourselves about what hap- © 


1 On the need to go back to the consideration of the historical Jesus as an — 
antidote to the tendency of dogmatic decisions concerning the Person of 
Christ to obscure His true image, vide Gore’s Bampton Lectures on the — 
Incarnation of the Son of God, p. 144. 4 


SS eo 


JESUS. 351 


pened nineteen centuries ago, from the spirit of Christ 
living in the Church or from our own spiritual experience. 
Accordingly, the apologetic of the hour runs largely along 
these lines. Now that the Church can do nothing for a 
man in quest of faith, or that the “evidence of Christian 
experience ” is without validity, I by no means assert. A 
species of Christianity might have been permanently pro- 
pagated without any written record of the life of the 
Founder by the influence He exerted on His first disciples, 
and through them on their contemporaries, and through the 
first generation of Christians on the next, and so on till the 
world’s end. Through word and act He moulds the men 
who are with Him, and makes them the heroes they after- 
wards appear, and so a certain definite type of religious 
thought and character is established. On this hypothesis 
Jesus would be simply the unknown cause of certain known 
effects, or a cause knowable only through the effects. 
Among these effects might fall to be reckoned the literary 
picture drawn by early Christians of Him whose name they 
bore: the acts ascribed to Him being such as they deemed 
congruous to His character, the words put into His mouth 
not actually uttered by Him, but expressive of thoughts 
which His spiritual influence enabled His disciples to con- 
ceive; the Gospels, in short, a product not of memory, but 
of an inspired imagination. In proof that a religion might 
be successfully propagated under such conditions reference 
might be made to Buddhism, which has flourished for two 
thousand years, though concerning the history of the 
founder little or nothing can be definitely ascertained. A 
Christianity so originating and so perpetuated would be a 
purely natural product, entirely independent of all questions 
as to the present existence of Jesus or of the power of a 
“Living Christ” to exert supernatural influence on the 
minds of men. 

Such a Christianity is better than nothing, but it surely 
leaves much to be desired! For one thing it makes each 
successive generation very dependent on that which goes 


Bad APOLOGETICS. 


before. We receive our Christianity through the spirit of 
Christ living in the community into which we are born. 
But what if the spirit of Christ so-called be in great 
measure a spirit of anti-Christ? Is there no means by 
which we can protect ourselves from its baleful influence, 
no standard Christianity by which the actual can be tested, 
no ideal by which the real can be criticised? To this it 
may be replied: Yes, there is the evangelic presentation 
which by comparison is relatively perfect, the picture 
of the Master by those who were nearest Him, which, 
whether historic truth or poetic fiction, may be assumed to 
be in large measure true to His spirit. It is fortunate that 
there is such a picture to refer to—on naturalistic principles 
it might have been otherwise; and it may bring us nearer 
to the genuine image of Jesus than contemporary presenta- 
tions. But it is not a matter of indifference whether it 
be truth or fiction. Its value, both as an instrument of 
criticism and as an aid to godly living, depends on the 
measure of its historicity. I want to be sure that the 
type of goodness portrayed in the Gospels was embodied 
in an actual life. If the Jesus of the Gospels really lived 
as there described, I have a right to condemn nonconformity 
to His image in others, and am under obligation to aim at 
conformity thereto in my own conduct. What He was we 
ought to be, what He was we can approximately be. But 
if the Jesus of the Gospels be a devout imagination then 
the right of reform and the obligation to conform cease. 
The fair Son of man belongs to the serene region of poetry ; 
real life at the best must move on a much lower level. 
Believers in the supernatural, in a Christ risen, ascended, 
and still living, may assert their independence of history in 
another way. They may make their own religious experi- 
ence in conversion and sanctification their apologetic start- 
ing-point, and reason thus: Whatever difficulties may be 
raised about the earthly history of Christ we cannot doubt 
that He now lives in heaven, for we have experienced His 
spiritual power in our own hearts. We know therefrom 


_ oe 


JESUS. 353 


not only that He lives, but what manner of being He is. 
The spiritual effects reveal the character of the Cause; 
through these we can form to ourselves a mental image of 
the exalted Lord. And by means of that image we can 
even verify the general truth of the picture of Jesus 
presented in His earthly history. The two likenesses 
correspond, ‘There is in both the same holy abhorrence of 
sin, the same compassion for sinners, the same willingness 
and ability to save. This is in brief the form of an argu- 
ment which admits of being indefinitely expanded and 
enforced with rhetorical power. And far be it from me to 
say that it is entirely illusory. But I do certainly think 
that it will not bear the strain which some seem inclined 
to put upon it.’ In the first place, does not the experience 
which forms the foundation of the argument presuppose the 
faith which it is used to prove? The heavenly existence 
of Christ, and as much of His earthly life as we need to 
know, are deduced from an experience which is regarded as 
a purely objective and independent datum. Is it really 
an independent datum? Does it not depend for all its 
peculiar characteristics on preconceived ideas both of the 
heavenly and of the earthly Christ? Does not the ordinary 
convert take for granted the truth of what is said about 
Christ in gospels and epistles, and in the traditional teach- 
Ing of the Church? Does not the quality of religious 
experience in general vary with the antecedent state of 
mind of its subject ? Men living in heathen countries may 
have their religious experiences, but they cannot have 
specifically Christian experience while they remain ignorant 
of Christ. Philosophers in Christian countries who have 
accepted the conclusions of negative criticism regarding 
the Gospels, can have a religious experience which they 
may think themselves entitled to call Christian, but it is 
one of a very different complexion from that of a convert 
at a revival meeting. It is such as results from the power 
of a few ethical ideas like that of dying unto self in order 
1 Vide, e.g., The Living Christ and the Four Gospels, by Dr. Dale, 
Z 


354 APOLOGETICS, 


to truly live.” Theirs is indeed a Christianity independent 
of history, but it is not one likely to be accepted as ortho- 
dox or legitimate by the patrons of the argument now under 
consideration. : 

That argument seems open to a second criticism—viz. 
that it puts the heavenly and the earthly Christ in the 
wrong order. Its first inference from experience is the 
present Christ living in heaven, its second the past Christ 
who once lived on earth. The Christ of history is honestly 
believed in, but faith in Him is not deemed necessary to 
the experience. Experience does not arise out of but rather 
gives us that faith; its sole and all-sufficient source is the 
heavenly Christ, and His spiritual powers. This is a very 
precarious ground to stand on. The earthly Christ is the 
source of the heavenly Christ’s power. The earthly Christ 
must first be in the mind as the lever on which the heavenly 
Christ works. The heavenly Christ, or the Spirit who is 


ee 


His alter ego, takes of the things relating to the earthly © i 


Christ and uses them as means of moral renewal; such is 
the account of the matter given by Jesus Himself as re- 
ported in the Fourth Gospel. Without these materials to 
work with the heavenly Christ would be impotent, or left 
in possession of only such power as He is able to exercise 
on such as never heard of His name, If the Gospels were 
to be lost, or all faith in their truth to perish, Christianity 
as a distinctive type of religion would disappear from the 
world.” It is essentially a historical religion. 


In attaching such importance to intimate knowledge of — 
the historic Jesus one may seem to lay himself open to the 


charge of clinging to a rudimentary religious intuition, with 

its inevitable limitations, instead of going on to perfection. 

The path leading thereto, we are told, is this: First comes 

the intuition of the man Jesus. Then comes in due course 
1 Vide Works of T. H. Green, vol. iii. 


2 Stearns says : ‘‘ There is no reason to believe that Christianity would for 


any long time continue to exist as an active power in the world were the 
Bible to be blotted out of existence,” — The Evidence of Christian Experience, 
p. 314. 


= 
_ ae : 


JESUS. 355 


of development the dogma of the God-man, which invests 
the historic Jesus with a divine nature, but in doing so 
evacuates His humanity of its contents and reduces it to a 
ghostly abstraction. Finally arrives the perfect stage of 
the philosophic idea underlying the dogma: God manifesting 
Himself in the world of nature and humanity.! Whether 
this be a true account of the course Christianity had to run, 
or not, need not be here discussed. Suffice it to say, that 
if the choice lay between these three alternatives I should 
prefer the intuition to either the dogma or the idea. If 
the dogma did indeed imply the humanity of Jesus stripped 
of all reality, it would cheat us* out of the very boon sup- 
posed to be conferred by the Incarnation—God revealing 
Himself through a human life. If the idea be the true 

_ reality which makes us independent of empirical reality, we 
gain, indeed, an imposing universal truth, but at the cost of 
the inspiration which comes from firm faith in a perfect life 
lived on this earth by a man in whom the Divine Spirit 
was immanent in a unique measure. ‘The need of the hour 
is not philosophy, but restored intuition. Let us see Jesus 
of Nazareth clearly, and, if need be, let the dogma be 

reconstructed so that the vision shall remain in all its 
vividness.” 

1 Vide Essay on “‘ Christian Dogma” in Green’s Works, vol. iii, 

2 The question discussed in the closing paragraphs of this chapter has 
occupied the attention of German theologians. Among those who have con- 
tributed to its discussion in magazines and otherwise are Nosgen, Haupt, 
and Koenig, Ndésgen goes to an extreme in insisting on faith in the histori- 
city of the Gospels as essential. Haupt takes up 4 position similar to that of 
Dr. Dale. The view of Nésgen is substantially that stated in the foregoing 
pages. The most important work bearing on the question that I know is 
Herrmann’s Verkehr des Christen mit Gott, 1892, It is antipietistic in spirit, 
and in sympathy with Luther and with Ritschl’s attitude in his Geschichte 
des Pietismus, and insists on the supreme importance of knowing the historic 


Christ. The risen Christ he regards, not as the source of faith, but rather 
as the product of faith—a Glaubens-gedanken, 


356 APOLOGETICS. 


CHAPTER II. 
JESUS AS THE CHRIST. 


LITERATURE—Stanley Leathes, The Religion of the Christ 
(Bampton Lectures for 1874); Matthew Arnold, Literature 
and Dogma (chap. vil.); Baur, Geschichte der Christlichen 
Kirche, ler Band; Drummond, Zhe Jewish Messiah, 1877; 
Stanton, Zhe Jewish and the Christian Messiah, 1886 ; 
Baldensperger, Das WSelbstbewusstsen Jesu wm Inchte der 
Messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit, 1888; Bornemann, 
Unterricht im Christenthum, 1891; Martineau, Seat of 
Authority in Religion, 1890. 


Jesus, we have seen, was very welcome for His own sake, — 
apart from His relation to the previous history of the 
world, or of Israel, and might on His own merits have for — 
faith the highest religious value, as the revealer of God in | 
the fulness of His grace and truth. And we can conceive ~ 
of faith as expressing its sense of the absolute religious worth — 
of Jesus in categories of thought current in the present — 
time, rather than in those current in the long bygone ages 
and among other peoples, such as the Christ or the Logos, — 
Faith has a perfect right to do so. Had the New Testament — 
been written in this century and in Europe, the religious 
significance of Jesus might have been found set forth therein 
in terms not known in the first century, and in Palestine ; ; 
and some of the terms used in the actual New Testament 
to express what Jesus is to faith, such as the Logos, might 
have been missing, though the truth thereby suggested— — 
that Jesus has the highest value as the full self-communi- — 
cation of the living God, not merely for Israel, but for the 
Gentile world, for the whole human race—would not have — 
failed to find recognition. It is the inalienable privilege 
of a living faith, and its instinctive impulse, to declare the | 
treasure it finds in Jesus in its own way, and in words and 
ideas thrilling with its own fresh life. In poetry and in 
preaching it uses this liberty. In theology the privilege — 


JESUS AS THE CHRIST. 357 


has been little taken advantage of, the tendency being 
to fall back on Scripture terms and categories as alone 
authorised, and as alone competent to express a true 
adequate doctrine concerning the person of Jesus! Of 
these inspired terms the most valuable, and therefore most 
frequently to be used for the purposes of theology, are 
those which are most universal in their character, and most 
independent of local and temporary associations. Foremost 
among the titles of Jesus possessing this character are 
“Son of God” and “Son of man.” The synthesis of these 
two titles expresses the eternal truth of Christianity as the 
universal absolute religion. 

While all this is true, it is not unimportant for theology, 
and even for religious faith, to affirm of Jesus that He was 
the Christ. For we must not forget that Christianity is 


not merely a universal and absolute religion, but likewise 


a historical religion. In connection with this aspect of 
the Christian faith, that Jesus was the Christ is a very 
essential proposition. It implies in general that the Chris- 
tian religion had its root in, and was the consummation of, 
the religion of Israel. We expect of the absolute religion 
that it shall be found on inquiry to be the crown and ripe 
fruit of the religious development of the world. This is 
the demand at once of faith and of philosophy. Neither 


can rest till it has been able to see in Jesus the Desire of 


all nations. That He was this so far as Israel was con- 
cerned is declared when we affirm that He was the Christ. 
The affirmation, if well founded, has apologetic value both 
for the religion of Israel and for the Christian religion, 
With reference to the former it implies that the religious 
history of Israel embodied a real self-revelation of God 


_ through a special gracious providence. With reference to 
_ the latter it implies that in Jesus that revelation culmin- 


ated, and that providence reached its goal. Each supports 
the claims of the other, and the two together constitute a 
harmonious, complete, historic movement. 

1 Vide on this Bornemann, Unterricht im Christenthum, pp. 65, 66. 


358 APOLOGETICS, 


That Jesus is the Christ is therefore an important 
affirmation, if true. But on what grounds does the affir- 
mation rest? Did Jesus claim to be the Christ, and was 
His claim valid? Let us look at the latter question first. 
Now it is important to have a clear understanding of what 
is implied in a valid claim, in other words what was the 
necessary and sufficient outfit for one who was to be a 
Christ. The question throws us back on Hebrew prophecy. 
For we may disregard in this connection the apocalyptic 
writings. Their bearing on the Messianic idea is of quite 
subordinate moment. It relates to the language rather than 
to the substance of the idea, so far as Jesus is concerned. 
These writings doubtless had a place in the religious 
development of Israel. But revelation is hardly respon- 
sible for them; for the most part they sink below the 
level of inspiration, and belong in spirit to the night of 
legalism. The. question of vital importance is, What are 
the leading momenta in the Messianic idea as presented 
in the oracles of the Hebrew prophets? The question has 
already been answered by anticipation. In our study of 
the characteristics of Old Testament prophecy, and especi- 
ally of its optimism, we found that the hopes of Israel 
centred around three things: a right Royal Man, a king- 
dom of the good with God’s law written on their heart, 
and a suffering servant of God making Himself King of 
that kingdom by His spiritual insight and self-sacrifice. 
And at the close of that study it was affirmed that in 


Jesus these three ideals meet: that He is the Royal 5 


Man, the bringer in of the kingdom of grace, and the man 
of sorrow who conquers human hearts by suffering love.t 
That these ideals are the salient points of prophecy will 
probably be admitted by all competent students. That in 
Jesus they met will be not less frankly acknowledged by 
all who see in Him one very welcome for His own sake. 
For such Jesus is the one true proper Royal Man in all 


human history. His claim to be the wisest teacher and 


1 Vide Book II. chap. vi. p. 261. 


JESUS AS THE CHRIST. 359 


the man of most tragic experience they readily own. His 
influence through wisdom and suffering their admira- 
tion and love confess. What more is needed to justify 
the assertion that Jesus is the Christ? To this ques- 
tion one such as Mr. Arnold might reply—it is indeed 
the gist of what he has written on the subject in 
Literature and Dogma:—“Is not the correspondence 
between the prophetic ideals and the history of Jesus 
only an accidental coincidence; very remarkable cer- 
tainly, yet possessing no religious significance such as 
that assertion implies? When you say that Jesus is 
Christ, you mean that it was God’s preannounced purpose 
that such a personage should come, and that in Jesus that 
purpose found its fulfilment. Might not the prophetic 
ideals be poetic dreams, and the correspondence between 
them and the life of Jesus, so far as real, only a curious 
historical phenomenon?” Such scepticism is possible only 
to those who have no faith in a Living God who works 
out purposes in history. It is an attitude towards history 
analogous to that of the materialist towards the physical 
constitution of the universe. As the materialist regards 
the world as the product of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, 
so the man who, on the grounds indicated, doubts the 
Messianic claims of Jesus, regards history as a succession 
of events in which no trace of a Providence can be 
discovered. We must leave such a man to the enjoyment 
of his doubts. It is not to persons in such a state of mind 
we appeal when, having regard to the correspondence 
between prophetic ideals and gospel realities, we say, Jesus 
was the Christ. hs 

If Jesus was the Christ He might know Himself to be 
such, and make public acknowledgment of the fact. Is 
there any good ground for believing that He did indeed 
advance Messianic pretensions? With the Gospels in our 
hands it seems difficult to resist the conclusion that He 
did. Many sayings are recorded as uttered by Him which 
clearly imply a Messianic consciousness. Accordingly, 


360 APOLOGETICS. 


that Jesus claimed to be, or allowed Himself to be called, 
the Messiah, is admitted by some of the most negative and 
sceptical critics of the evangelic history, as, eg. by Dr. 
Ferdinand Baur, the famous founder of the Tiibingen 
school of tendency - criticism. The concession, however, 
has little value, when those who make it conceive of Jesus 
as adopting or accepting the title simply from reasons of 
policy. Such was Baur’s idea. His view of Christ’s 
position is this: He was, and knew Himself to be, the 
founder of a new religion, ethical in spirit, and therefore 
universal in destination. To such a religion anything 
peculiar to the religion of Israel, and particularism of 
every description, was entirely foreign; its concern was 
with man and the essentially human. Jesus understood 
this quite well, and in His heart had entirely shaken off 
the narrow trammels of Judaism. But He could not 
entirely break away from these in His public action. 
In especial He could not disregard the national hope of 
Israel, the Messianic idea) He must bow to it as a 
great fact; as the inaugurator of the universal religion 
He must even Himself accept the title of Messiah, and 
play the corresponding réle to the satisfaction of His 
countrymen, or, at least, of the most godly among them. 
To conquer the world, He must first get a foothold in 
Judea, and that was possible only for one who respected 
and seemed able to fulfil the Messianic hope. This was 
the tribute which Jesus, however reluctantly, had to pay 
to the spirit of His time and people. 

It is so far satisfactory that the author of the Tiibingen 
theory frankly acknowledges that Jesus, from whatever 
motives, did give Himself out as the Messiah. Yet even 
on this point, it must .be confessed, his opinion is of less 
weight than it may seem entitled to in virtue of his great 
learning. For the truth is, it was Baur’s interest to 
arrive at the conclusion that Jesus claimed to be the 
Christ. Only so could he secure the necessary conditions 

Vide Geschichte der Christlichen Kirche, Band I. pp. 86, 87. 


JESUS AS THE CHRIST. 361 


for the dialectic process from which resulted, according to 
his theory, the old Catholic Church and its conception of 
Christianity. In Jesus, the initiator of the movement, 
must meet two things not absolutely irreconcilable, but 
certain to appear so to His followers. But lo! here are 
two things admirably fitted to serve the purpose of 
Gegensétze or antagonistic principles: the universal spirit 
of the new religion, and the particularistic form of the 
Jewish Messianic idea. They suit the purpose so well 
that it may be assumed without further trouble that 
they did both meet in the teaching of Jesus, And 
granting that they did both find a place in the doctrine 
of the Master, it is not difficult to conjecture what 
will follow. Some will place the emphasis of their faith 
on the one aspect of the doctrine, some on the other; 
whence will come first war, then efforts at reconciliation, 
then ultimate harmonious and stable peace. Such in 
a nutshell is the celebrated Tiibingen theory of the 
origin of the Christianity of the old Catholic Church, 
as it made its appearance in the latter half of the second 
century. 

If the alternatives were, Jesus calling Himself Messiah 
-dlely on grounds of policy, or totally ignoring the Messianic 
idea and hope, one could have no hesitation in preferring 
the latter. If we cannot have a Jesus who is the ripe 
fruit of Old Testament religion, let us at least have a Jesus 
who is sincere, unworldly, guileless—an absolutely true, 
pure-hearted, godly man; not a time-serving opportunist. 
We may not be able on these terms to hold fast the old 
faith in a revelation of God to Israel, but’ we shall at all 
events be able to think better and more hopefully of 
human nature. But there is another alternative besides 
the two indicated. Jesus might have a purified, trans- 
formed Messianic idea, and might with perfectly sincere 
conviction regard Himself as the realiser of that idea. It 
belongs to the theory that Jesus called Himself Messiah 
from motives of policy, that He should accept the Mes- 


362 - APOLOGETICS. 


sianic idea pretty much as He found it. From all we 
know of Him, this was intrinsically unlikely. As He 
appears in the Gospels Jesus occupies an attitude of radical 


dissent from the whole thought and spirit of His age. If: 


we are to understand Him thoroughly, we cannot attach 
too much importance to this fact. His character and 
historical position, as has been already pointed out in an 
earlier part of this work,’ are explained by two sets of 
conditions, one positive and the other negative. The posi- 
tive conditions are: an elect people, a prophetic Messianic 
forecast, and a sacred literature. To these three answer, 
ag a negative group, election misconceived and abused, a 
degenerate corrupt Messianic hope, and Rabbinism, ie. 
enslavement to the letter of a Holy Book misinterpreted 
and idolised. These three counterfeits went together, and 
were naturally cause and effect of each other. To be out 
of sympathy with any one of them was to be equally out 
of sympathy with the others. That Jesus had no sym- 
pathy with Jewish exclusiveness, in its claim to a monopoly 
of divine favour, is certain. That He had a passionate 
aversion to Rabbinism and all its ways is, if possible, still 
more certain. That the popular notion of Messiah had no 
attraction for Him may be confidently inferred from these 
two facts, not to speak of the concurrent evidence to this 
effect supplied by the gospel records. 

On the other hand, the solidarity of Jesus with the first 
group of historical conditions was as pronounced as His 
antipathy to their contemporary caricatures. He was, 
like Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. In his account of 
the contents of Christianity as taught by Christ, Baur 
represents Him as indebted to the Gentiles not less than 
to the Jews: to Greek philosophy, as influenced by 
Socrates, for His doctrine of the supreme value of man 
as a moral subject; to the world-wide Empire of Rome, 
for the universalist spirit of His teaching. But it is really 
not necessary to go outside the Old Testament and the 
1 Vide Book I. p. 56. 


g 


JESUS AS THE CHRIST, 363 


Jewish people to understand and explain Jesus as far as 
that is possible. He believed with His whole heart in the 
divine calling of Israel; He loved the Scriptures; He 
especially delighted in the Psalms and the prophetic 
oracles, in the passion for righteousness to which they 
give eloquent expression, in the inspiring view which they 
present of the character of God, and in the glowing pictures 
they paint of the good time coming. If He had any 
favourites among the prophets, Isaiah, and, still more, the 
ereat unknown prophet whom critics call Deutero-Isaiah, 
had a foremost place amongst them; Jeremiah, too,— 
witness the allusion at the supper table to his oracle of 
the new covenant. The Gospels are full of echoes from 
the second half of the book which goes by Isaiah’s name. 
With reference to the second Isaiah it has been beautifully 
remarked :—-“ As we enter the gospel history from the 
Old Testament, we feel at once that Isaiah is in the air. 
In the fair opening of the new year of the Lord, the 
harbinger notes of the book awaken about us on all sides, 
like the voices of birds come back with the spring.”? It 
is open to any one to suggest that these references are due 
to the evangelists rather than to Jesus. But even if this 
were admitted, it would be a fair inference that their par- 
tiality for Isaiah reflects a trait in the religious character 
of their Master. 

From His favourite prophets Jesus doubtless drew His 
Messianic idea. It is from them mainly that we derive 
what we have found to be the cardinal elements of the 
Messianic hope — the Royal Man, the kingdom of the 
good, and the suffering servant of Jehovah. With these 
the mind of Jesus could be in perfect sympathy: their 
unworldliness, their lofty spirituality, would commend 
themselves to His pure, devout soul. For the advent of 
a man who, by his wisdom and patience, could found such 
a kingdom of the good with the law of God written on 


1G. A. Smith, The Book of Isaiah, vol. ii. p. 282. Vide Matt. iii, 3-17, 
iv. 14-17, xii, 17-21; Luke iv. 18, 19. . 


364 APOLOGETICS. 


their heart, in accordance with Jeremiah’s oracle of the 
new covenant, He could sincerely and fervently pray. 
Nothing could be better for Israel and for the world than 
that a a man should come. 

But could He imagine that He Himself was that man ? 
There certainly never has been a man since the beginning 
of the world who more completely met the requirements. 
Suppose for a moment He was the very man, could He 
regard Himself as such? No, it has been replied, in 
effect, because such a Messianic self-consciousness is in- 
compatible with the moral worth of One capable of being 
a Messiah. A self-conscious Messiah is, ipso facto, no 
Messiah; therefore all the words ascribed to Jesus which 
imply a Messianic consciousness must be regarded as an 
expression of the faith of the Apostolic Church, and not as 
genuine sayings of the Master. 

With the ethical postulate of this argument—that no 
utterances must be ascribed to Jesus incompatible with 
His meek and lowly spirit—we must all entirely agree. 
The problem of the reconciliation of Christ’s Messianic 
consciousness with His humility is, I have for some time 
back perceived? of greater importance than has been 
generally recognised, and Dr. Martineau deserves thanks 
for projecting it upon public attention with an emphasis 
which will insure that it shall not hereafter be overlooked. 
His view is that the problem is insoluble. In this view 
most certainly believers in Christ will not concur; never- 
theless the argument advanced in its support will not be 
in vain if it compel believing men to see that there is a 
problem. We have been too much accustomed to talk 
about Christ’s Messianic claims, without being sufficiently 
sensitive lest we should«make Him appear to be animated 
by ambitious passions or by vain self-importance. We 
must be careful so to state His attitude towards His 


4 Vide Martineau, Seat of Authority in Religion, pp. 577-585. 
3 Vide The Kingdom of God, pp. 158-140; also The Miraculous Element 
én the Gospels, pp. 256-258. 


Z pati > 


(Pe) 
~ 
7 
‘ ‘ 


JESUS AS THE CHRIST. 365 


Messianic vocation that these unholy elements shall be 
eliminated. This is possible by looking at the Messiahship 
on the side of duty rather than on the side of dignity, and 
by giving prominence to the suffering aspect of Messiah’s 
career. It was in this way Jesus Himself contemplated 
His Messiahship. He thought of Himself as called to an 
arduous office, involving toil, humiliation, and sorrow. And 
therefore His attitude was not that of one making a claim, 
but rather that of loyal submission to the behest of divine 
Providence. “His coming forth as Messiah was not 
usurpation, but obedience; not free choice, but inevitable 
divine necessity.”* The indignities of His earthly experi- 
ence and the foreseen tragedy at the end of His career 
effectually guaranteed the purity of His motives. It is not 
the way of ambition to clutch at a position involving such 
experiences. No man taketh the honour of high priest- 
hood to himself when the priest has to be also the victim. 
Neither is vanity or self-seeking likely to aspire to a 
Messiahship of which the outstanding feature is suffering. 
Many of the utterances ascribed to Jesus, which involve 
a Messianic consciousness, plainly breathe the spirit of 
lowliness rather than that of arrogance or vain-glory. 
This holds true of the title Son of man, the favourite self- 
designation of Jesus. It expressed the Messianic con- 
sciousness of Jesus in three distinct directions by three 
distinct groups of texts. “It announced a Messiah 
appointed to suffer, richly endowed with human sympathy, 
and destined to pass through suffering to glory. In all 
three respects it pointed at a Messianic ideal contrary to 
popular notions. For that very reason Jesus loved the 
name, as expressing truth valid for Himself, as fitted to 
foster just conceptions in receptive minds, and as steering 
clear of current misapprehensions.”* Even in those cases 


1 Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der Messianischen 
Hoffnungen seiner Zeit, p. 191. 

2 Vide The Kingdom of God, pp. 176, 177, and pp. 172-175 for the 
relative texts. 


366 APOLOGETICS. 


in which the title has an apocalyptic reference, the lowly 
mind shines through. The Son of man of the judgment 
programme is one who can say: I have been an hungered, 
thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, in prison. 

But there are certain words ascribed to Jesus in the 
Gospels which it is deemed impossible He could have 
uttered. Such are those in which He claims to be greater 
than Jonah, Solomon, and the Temple. These sayings do 


certainly express a sense of personal dignity, and we have 


only a choice between regarding them as on that account 
unauthentic, and discovering a way of harmonising a sense 
of dignity with the spirit of lowliness. Now there are two 
lines of thought which are available here. In the first 
place, it will be found that wherever Jesus appears in the 
Gospels in the act of self-assertion, it is always as against 
a spirit of scornful unbelief manifested in His environ- 
ment. The most notable instance is that in which He 
claims to be the indispensable medium of the knowledge of 
the Father. When, according to the representation of the 
evangelist, did He utter those words beginning, No man 
knoweth the.Son but the Father? It was when He wag 
confronted with the unbelief of the “wise and prudent.” 
Did it not become even the meek and lowly One to draw 
Himself up to the full height of His dignity in such cir- 
cumstances, even as it became Paul to assert His importance 
as the apostle of the Gentiles in opposition to Judaistic 
narrowness and intolerance? If Judaists said to Paul, 
You are no apostle, that they might destroy His influence 
as the preacher of a universal Christianity, it became hin, 
it was his positive duty, to say with emphasis: I am an 
apostle, not behind the chiefest apostles. To say this in 
such circumstances waS not vain boasting, but proper 
jealousy for a great interest committed to his hands. Even 
so in the case of Jesus. If scribes and Pharisees, proud of 
their learning and sanctity, said: What can this Nazarene 
provincial have to say about God, or His kingdom, or His 
righteousness? Jesus owed it to the truth that was in 


JESUS AS THE CHRIST. 367 


Him to claim power to reveal the Father, and to proclaim 
His confident belief that, however despicable His present 
following might be, the future belonged to Him and the 
cause He represented. 

The words in which Jesus asserted for Himself a great- 
ness superior to that of Solomon, or Jonah, or the Temple 
are quite compatible with a lowly mind. They were all 
spoken in the same circumstances as those in which the 
claim to exclusive knowledge of the Father was advanced. 
And they were spoken in the same sense as that in which 
Jesus said of John the Baptist that even the least in the 
kingdom of God was greater than he. In personal terms 
Jesus expressed His sense of the greatness of the new era, 
His consciousness of belonging to a new world of values. 
Solomon represented material wealth and splendour, Jonah 
represented religious nationalism, the Temple represented 
a worship of outward sensuous ritual; Jesus represented 
the kingdom within, the religion of humanity, the worship 
of the Spirit; so did the meanest of His disciples. There- 


fore not only He, but the least in the kingdom of God, 


was greater than the men and things of greatest magnitude 


_ belonging to the old era. Thus understood, the sayings in 


tad 


question, which to a prejudiced critic wear an aspect of 
conceit, do but express, in a grand prophetic way, spiritual 
insight. The speaker was so remote from egotism, that 
He could afford to be indifferent to the superficial appear- 
ance of it in the form of expression, just as He was so 
remote from vice that He could afford to be the companion 
of the vicious, though in neither case without paying the 
penalty in an evil, misjudging world. | 

Thus far of one line of thought, which seems to supply 
real help towards the reconciliation of Christ’s sense of 
Messianic dignity with His personal lowliness. The other 
remains to be briefly indicated. The problem of the 
reconciliation of dignity with humility is a general one 
in ethical psychology. If Jesus could not compatibly with 
His humility be conscious of His Messiahship, then it is 


368 APOLOGETICS. 


impossible to combine humility with the consciousness of 
being a father, a chief magistrate, a judge, a minister of 
state, a king. The Messianic dignity is unique; still it 
belongs to a class. The grace of humility may be pecu- 
liarly hard to practise for the one man in history who can 
be the Christ; still the problem, if exceptionally delicate, 
is the same in principle for him as for all occupants of 
places of distinction. If an ordinary king can be humble, 
so can the Messianic King. If the leader of a great 
religious reform, like Luther or Knox, can be lowly, so 
ean He who said, “Take my yoke upon you.” And where 
is the difficulty in any case? Is the problem not con- 
stantly receiving solutions? Is it not among the great 
ones, great in position, responsibility, endowment, and 
influence, that true lowliness is found ? Nay, is not God, 


the greatest, also the lowliest? “I dwell in the high + 


and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and 
humble spirit.” Is this not the very truth involved in 
the incarnation—God humbling Himself to share and bear 
the sins and miseries of His own children ? 

Jesus was “He that should come.” He was what was 
wanted—a man richly endowed with prophetic intuition, 
in spirit wholly opposed to Rabbinism, with the purity of 
heart needful to see God, and able to speak the last and 
highest word about God. He came when He was wanted, 
when Judaism had reached the lowest point of degeneracy, 
and the night of legalism was at its darkest. He under- 


stood the situation, and felt that it was His vocation to i 
meet the pressing needs of the time, and did meet them 


with perfect fidelity and wisdom. By His public career 
He fulfilled God’s purpose in the election of Israel, which 
took place for the sake of the true religion, not for the 
sake of its temporary vehicle. For the revelation of God 
and the moral renewal of the world one man turned out to 


be of incomparably more service than the whole nation of. 


Israel, or the southern kingdom of Judah, or the post- 


exilian remnant. That was obvious to the first disciples 3 


JESUS AS FOUNDER OF THE KINGDOM OF Gop. 369 


of Jesus, as it is to us. Therefore they called Him Christ. 
Thereby they expressed the essential fact truly. In apply- 
ing to their Master that epithet, the apostles did not start 
a false theory, or put upon Him “ the first deforming mask, 
the first robe of hopeless disguise, under which the real 
personality of Jesus of Nazareth disappeared from sight.” ? 
If, after they had believed in Him as the Christ, they 
discovered minute correspondences between facts in His 
history and prophetic texts, and delighted to point these 
out, they did, to say the least, what was very natural and 
innocent, If such correspondences were not fitted to pro- 
duce faith, they at least gave gratification to a faith already 


existing, and in the main well grounded. The assertion 
_ that the Messianic interpretation of the Old Testament in 


the New Testament “has degraded the sublimest religious 


literature of the ancient world into a book of magic and a 


tissue of riddles”? will be endorsed only by those who 
regard the Messianic hope as a fond delusion and romantic 


dream, 


CHAPTER III; 
JESUS AS FOUNDER OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD, 


LITERATURE.—Seeley, Hece Homo; Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, 
1835, Das Leben Jesu fiir das Deutsche Volk, 1864; Baur, 
Geschichte der Christlichen Kirche; Keim, Geschichte Jesu von 
Nazara (Band II. pp. 125-204 on the Miracles); Bernhard 
Weiss, Das Leben Jesu, 1884; Havet, Le Christianisme et 
ses Origins, vol. iv.; Candlish, The Kingdom of God Biblically 
and Historically considered (Cunningham Lectures, 1884); 
Row, Fhe Supernatural in the New Testament, and Christian 
Evidences viewed in relation to Modern Thought (Bampton 


Lectures for 1877); Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ ; 


Bruce, The Miraculous Element in the Gospels, and The King- 


1 Martineau, Seat of Authority in Religion, p. 329. 
3 Ibid. p. 329, 
2A 


370 APOLOGETICS. 


dom of God; Martineau, The Seat of Authority in Religion 


(Book V. chap. i. “The Veil taken away.) 


The burden of Christ’s preaching, according to the Synop- — 
tical Gospels, was the Kingdom of God. That they represent 
this as His great theme is one of many marks of their 
historic fidelity. For it was to be expected that the Christ, 
when He came, would make the kingdom the great subject 
of His discourse. The establishment of a holy state in 
which ideally perfect relations between God and man — 


should be realised had been the aim of Jehovah and the 


hope of His people from the time of Israel’s election. The 
attempts at realisation had been failures; yet, still the hope — 
lived on. At length Jesus came, and if He were indeed — 
the Christ, what could He say but that now at last the 


kingdom was at hand ? 


Being the Christ Jesus had more to do than to announce 
the advent of the kingdom. He was indeed, like John the © 
Baptist, a prophet, but He was more. He was the King, 
and in that capacity He had to create the divine common- 
wealth whose approach He, as a prophet, proclaimed, 
His creative activity had to assume two forms. He had 
not only to bring into existence the thing, but He had to 
originate the true idea of the thing. For the kingdom 
was as grossly misconceived by the common mind as was 
the Messiahship, so that when Jesus, at the commencement — 
of His ministry, virtually intimated that through Him the — 
kingdom was about to come, He thereby imposed on Him- 
self the double task of making known the nature of the 
kingdom, and of giving to the kingdom wey conceived its” 


place in history. 


Two questions thus arise: What was Christ’s idea of the ~ 
kingdom ; and what means did He employ to bring it into — 


existence ? 


In the first chapter of this work it has been stated 
that two of the most outstanding characteristics of the 
kingdom, as Jesus conceived it, were spirituality and unt- — 


— 


~ 


JESUS AS FOUNDER OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 371 


versality.1_ The two attributes imply each other. That which 
is ethical or spiritual is universal, and nothing in religion 
is universal but that which belongs to the spirit of man. 
Yet, while most students of the Gospels would be willing 
to concede the former of the two ascriptions, there has been 
much dispute concerning the latter. Some contend that 
the promise Jesus came to announce was purely national, 
and that everything in the Gospels pointing in the direction 
of a universal relivion is part of the veil that must be 
taken away in order to see the true Jesus? There is the 
strangest confusion of parties on the question, among 
those who deny the universalistic character of Christ’s 
teaching being found so comparatively orthodox a theo- 
logian as Weiss, while Baur, as is well known, most 
strenuously maintained the affirmative. The opinion of 
Weiss, however, is no part of orthodoxy, it is only an 


instance of orthodoxy misled by an indiscriminate bias 


against Tiibingen heterodoxy. For while the theory of 
Baur in regard to the origin of Christianity is in many 
respects radically false, and based upon a naturalistic 
philosophy, his view on the particular question now under 
consideration is well founded. That Jesus should be the 
conscious teacher of a universal religion was to be expected, 
not on the ground suggested by Baur, that the spirit of 
universalism was in the air, the result of the world-wide 
dominion of Rome, but simply because such a religion was 
the natural outcome of the religious development of Israel. 
The steady drift of Israel’s history and of Hebrew prophecy, 
as has been made apparent in the foregoing book, was 
towards universalism. To say that Jesus came announcing 
the approach of a purely national theocratic kingdom, is 
to say that He did not understand the purpose of Israel’s 
election, the prophetic doctrine of God, and the oracle of 
the new covenant. It is to suppose Him blind to the 
lessons taught by past failures to establish either a righteous 
3 Vide p. 8. 
®So Martineau, Seat of Authority in Religion, pp. 585-587. 


372 APOLOGETICS. 


nation or a holy Church. The Jewish nation had been 
wrecked, and the Jewish Church had ended in Rabbinism ; 
and now what remained but to try a new experiment, that of 
forming a community based not on race or ritual, but on 
spiritual receptivity to the love of God ? 

Universal elements do certainly enter into Christ’s 
teaching as reported even in the Synoptical Gospels; such 
as the sayings concerning the coming into the kingdom of 
strangers from all quarters of the earth,’ and the preaching 
of the gospel in the whole world,? and the parables of the 
vinedressers, the great feast, and the prodigal son, and the 
programme of judgment.‘ The universalistic drift of 
these texts and others of kindred character is for the 
most part not denied; what is called in question is their 
authenticity. The suggestion is that they express the views 
of Christians of a later time when Gentile Christianity had 
become a great fact, not the mind of Christ. Nothing that 
an apologist can say can prevent such a suggestion being 
made. But he can with reason affirm that it is gratuitous 
and uncalled for; that there is no good ground for doubt- 
ing the authenticity of universalistic gospel texts; that 
there is no presumption against Jesus being universalistic 
in His spirit and tendency, if not in His outward activities ; 
that the presumption is indeed all the other way in refer- 
ence to one who had due insight into the meaning of His 
country’s history, and into His own position in the process 
of its religious development, That the Gospels represent 
Jesus as uttering words implying the near advent of a 
religion of humanity is as strong a point in favour of their 
historicity as that they represent the kingdom of God in 
general as the main theme of His preaching. In both alike 
Jesus was true to His’ antecedents, and to the needs, if not 
to the spirit, of His time. 

Before passing from this topic, let it simply be remarked 


2 Matt. viii. 11. 2 Matt. xxvi. 18; Mark xiv. 9 
8 Matt. xxi. 833-41 ; Luke xiv. 16-24; Luke xv. 11-32, 
* Matt. xxv. 31-46. 


id 
1 
‘ 


as 


JESUS AS FOUNDER OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 373 


in a sentence that this new idea of the kingdom, as spiritual 
and universal, not only found occasional expression in 
Christ’s words, but was immanent in His conduct. The 
interest He took in the common people was full of signfi- 
cance as the sign of a new departure. It proclaimed the 
importance of man, and it struck a death-blow at privilege. 
It was universalism in germ within the limits of the chosen 
race. 

The attributes of spirituality and universality differen- 
tiated the kingdom as Jesus conceived it from the kingdom 
of popular expectation; which, while theocratic, was 22 
other respects like any ordinary kingdom, outward and 
national. To complete its definition, it is necessary to 
make use of yet another contrast. The kingdom, as Christ 
presented it, was not a kingdom of law, but a kingdom of 
grace. It was not a demand but a gift. It was God as a 
Father, Christ’s chosen name for the Divine Being, coming 
down to men to dwell among them as His children, merci- 
fully forgiving their offences, and putting His Spirit within 
them that they might live worthily of their position as 
sons. Such was the kingdom implied in Jeremiah’s oracle 
of the new covenant, in contrast to that based on the old 
Sinaitic covenant with its law written on tables of stone. 
The contrast between the two kingdoms was indeed not 
absolute, but only relative, for as has been pointed out in 
another place, God’s relation to men was never merely 
legal; certainly was not so under the Decalogue, whose 
preface points to a work of redemption as the basis of 
Jehovah’s claim to obedience. Still the contrast, though 
only relative, was sufficiently real to justify the broad 
statement in the Fourth Gospel: the law was given by 
Moses, grace came by Jesus Christ.2 Many things in the 
Gospels indicate that grace was the keynote of Christ's 
doctrine of the kingdom; eg., the joyous spirit that ani- 
mated His disciples in contrast to the gloom that brooded 
over the company gathered around the Baptist, the kind of 
. 1 Vide p. 249, > Fsbn i, 17, 


374 APOLOGETICS, 


people who were chiefly invited to enter the kingdom, not 
the righteous, but “sinners,” and the eagerness with which 
many of the class responded to the call.’ 

Thus did Jesus create a new idea of the kingdom of 
God—new not in the sense that it had no roots in the Old 


Testament, but in the sense of novel emphasis given to - 


germs of truth latent in Hebrew prophecy. We have now 
to consider what means He employed to bring the kingdom 
so conceived into existence. 

Christ’s means and methods were congruous to the nature 
of the kingdom He came to found. It was a kingdom of 
grace, and His main instrument was love. His outfit as 
Messianic King consisted chiefly, and before all things, in 


an unbounded sympathy with the sinful and miserable, an 


“enthusiasm of humanity.” The text He is reported to 
have preached on in the synagogue of Nazareth gives the 
key to His whole ministry. He was under an irresistible 
impulse of the spirit of love to preach the gospel of the 
kingdom to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to bring 
deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the — 
blind.2 It- was probably through this great tide of love 


rolling through His heart that He became conscious of His _ 


Messianic vocation; it was certainly by its mighty power — 
that He was carried triumphantly through all the arduous 
tasks and trials of His public career. This love made — 
Him the “friend of publicans and sinners”; it also made — 
Him the marvellous healer of diseases. The former aspect — 
of His ministry drew upon Him the reproaches of con- — 
temporaries; the latter aspect is the stumbling-block of © 
modern unbelief. 

The miraculous element in the Gospels is a large subject 
with many sides, demanding for its adequate treatment a — 
volume rather than a few paragraphs. It raises the ques- — 


tion of the possibility of miracle, with reference to which — 


both philasophy and science are through many of their 


1 Vide The Kingdom of God, chap. i. 
* Luke iv, 18, 19. 


JESUS AS FOUNDER OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 375 


representatives in conflict with faith. This question cannot 
be gone into here. A few observations, however, may be 
helpful on two more special questions, viz. in what relation 
does the miraculous element stand to the primitive tradition 
of our Lord’s ministry ; and in what relation does the same 
element stand to that ministry itself as the outcome of 
Christ’s character and Messianic vocation ? 

As to the former of these two questions, there seems to 
be good reason to believe that miraculous or marvellous 
acts of healing had a place in the original apostolic tradi- 
tion. The men who had been with Jesus had stirring 
stories to tell of cures wrought on the bodies and minds 
of the sick, on persons suffering from fever, leprosy, palsy, 
demoniacal possession, blindness. Nine narratives of cures 
of such diseases are found in the triple tradition which 
forms the common basis of the Synoptical Gospels. The 
primitive gospel, whether it was the Logia of Matthew or 
the Gospel of Mark, the report of Peter’s preaching, 
appears to have been to a greater or less extent a miracle 
gospel2 This is, indeed, now very generally admitted, the 
only question seriously debated being whether the cures 
were in the strict sense miracalous, the naturalistic sug- 
gestion being that they were wrought by “moral therapeutics,” 
or by hypnotism. But it is hard to conceive of leprosy or 
of aggravated madness like that of the demoniac of Gadara 
yielding to anything short of miraculous power. This is 
virtually acknowledged by those who see in the story of 
the leper not a case of cure, but simply a declaration that 
the sufferer was already cured and clean, and in the story 
of the Gadarene demoniac a “ witty, in the literal sense, 
impossible history.” § 


1 On this topic, vide chap. viii. of this book. 

2 Vide on this topic, my Miraculous Element in the Gospels, chap. iii. 

3 So Keim in Jesu von Nazara. As Keim of all naturalistic theologians 
goes furthest in recognising the general historicity of the gospel record, it may 
be well to indicate here how he disposes of the miraculous element. He 
accepts all narratives which do not necessarily involve miracle in the strict 
sense. ‘The rest he throws overboard as supernumerary (iberzahlig), ‘To 


376 APOLOGETICS. 


It was formerly maintained by Strauss and others that 
the gospel miracles were the product of faith in Jesus as 
the Christ. They were myths born of Old Testament 
precedents and prophecies setting forth the marvellous 
works Messiah must have wrought after Jesus had been 
accepted as the Messiah. There is good reason, however, 
to believe that these miracles were not the creations of 
faith, but rather an authentic element of the original gospel 
offered to faith, They were in part the ground of the 
belief that Jesus was the Christ among the first generation 
of disciples. How far can they render such service now ? 
This brings us to the second point we proposed to consider. 

It must be confessed that miracles cannot be offered as 
evidences of Christianity now with the confidence with 
which they were employed for this purpose by the apologists 
of a past age. Men do not now believe in Christ because 
of His miracles: they rather believe in the miracles because 
they have first believed in Christ. For such believers Christ 
is His own witness, who accredits everything connected 
with Him: Scripture, prophecy, miracle. Those who are 
in this happy position need no help from apologists. But 
there are some who have not got the length of accepting 
miracles for Christ’s sake, not because they are speculative 
unbelievers in the possibility of miracle, but because they 
fail to see any congruity between miracles and Christ’s 
personal character or His Messianic vocation. Now it is 
difficult to establish any such congruity when miracles are 
viewed in the abstract merely as products of supernatural 
power. Then they sink into mere external signs attached 
to Christ’s proper work for evidential purposes, a mode of 


the supernumerary class he relegates (1) duplicates, such as the second 
feeding ; (2) parables transformed into events, e.g. the cursing of the fig 
tree and the miraculous draught of fishes ; (3) picture histories, e. g. the 
Gadarene demoniac ; (4) imitation miracles after Old Testament patterns ; 
(5) the nature miracles (feeding, stilling of the storm, change of water into 
wine, etc.). 

* For some remarks on the general subject of the miraculous, vide close of 
chapter v. of this book, 


JESUS AS FOUNDER OF THE KINGDOM OF Gop. 3877 


contemplating the subject which has ceased to have much 
value for many thoughtful minds,’ It is otherwise, however, 
when the miracles of Christ are regarded, not primarily as 
acts of preternatural power, but as acts of unparalleled love. 
(The reference here, of course, is to the miracles of healing ; 
the nature miracles must be left on one side to be dealt 
with as a special problem.?) Then there is no difficulty in 
perceiving how congruous the gospel miracles are both to 
the innermost spirit of Jesus and to His Messianic work. 
The constant desire of Jesus was to do good to the utter- 
most extent of His power, and that was also His supreme 
duty as the Christ having for His vocation to establish the 
kingdom of grace. He healed men’s bodies, as well as their 
souls, because He was able. Whence the power came, 
whether it was natural or supernatural, is a question of 
some scientific and theological interest, but not of vital 
religious importance. The thing to be chiefly noted is that, 
the acts of healing being witness, Jesus was a man who 
always did good to the full measure of His ability and 
opportunity. It is the divinity of His love, not the super- 
naturalness of His power, that commends Him to our faith, . 
as a man, and as the Christ. The healing miracles played 
their part in the revelation of that love. They were not 
the whole of the revelation, or even the principal part of it. 
Preaching the gospel to the poor, and keeping company 
with people of evil repute, were even more significant 


1 On the old and the new ways of regarding the functions of prophecy and 
miracle in revelation, vide The Chief End of Revelation, chaps. iv. and v. 
The older apologists viewed prophecy and miracle as evidential adjuncts to 
a doctrinal revelation, and laid stress on their miraculousness as pointing to 
a supernatural agent. The modern apologist views them as integral parts of 
revelation, and lays stress on the ethical rather than on the supernatural 
aspect. 

2 On this group, vide The Miraculous Element in the Gospels, chaps. vi. 
and viii. The view there contended for is that the nature miracles are not, 
any more than the healing miracles, to be regarded as mere displays of 
power, thaumaturgic feats, but as serving a useful purpose in connection with 
Christ’s work as the Herald and Founder of the kingdom of heaven. The 
nature miracles assert the supreme claims of the kingdom, and the certainty 
that its interests will be vindicated at all hazards, 


378 APOLOGETICS. 


manifestations of the ruling spirit of the Son of man. But 
all three should be taken together as belonging to the same 
category, and as integral parts of the Messianic ministry. 
That Jesus evangelised the poor, associated with the sinful, 
healed the sick, were each and all signs that He was the 
One who should come, the genuine Christ of a sin and 
sorrow-laden world. 

The gospel miracles, supremely valuable as a self-revela- 
tion of the Worker, have also permanent didactic signifi- 
cance as indicating that the kingdom of God is most 
comprehensive in scope, and covers all that relates to the 
well-being of man. Christ certainly cannot be charged 
with treating what we call spiritual interests as matters of 
subordinate importance. He was no mere social reformer, 
who thought all was well when the people had plenty of 
food and clothing, and when disease and care were rare 
visitants of their homes. He knew and taught that life 
was more than meat, or physical health or wealth. He 
constantly felt and showed a tender concern for the peace 
and health of human souls. But, on the other hand, that 
He was equally remote from the one-sidedness of an ultra- 
spiritualism the healing miracles conclusively prove. They 
are a protest by anticipation against all indifference to 
temporal interests as of no moment in comparison with 
eternal interests. They proclaim social salvation, however 
subordinate in value as compared with soul salvation, as 
nevertheless a part of the grand redemptive plan, They 
afford most satisfactory evidence of the entire healthiness 
of Christ’s sympathies, the freedom of His religious char- 
acter from all morbid elements, the sunny optimism of His 
spirit, What a contrast this Healer of disease and 
Preacher of pardon to the worst, to Buddha with: his 
religion of despair! How incredible that the monk in his 
cowardly flight from the world is the true embodiment 
of Christ’s ethical ideal! How manifest that the Christian 
as he ought to be, the true follower of Jesus, is a man 
who fights bravely and incessantly with every form of 


JESUS AS FOUNDER OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 379 


evil, whose passion is to leave the world better than he 
found it, and who makes no scrupulous distinction between 
saints and sinners, God’s poor and other poor, in the exer- 
cise of his benevolence, or between higher and lower 
interests in the measure of his zeal; but is ever thankful 
for opportunities of conferring benefit on any man, in any 
way, and to any extent! 

As Creator of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus displayed 
not only unbounded benevolence, but consummate wisdom. 
This attribute was an indispensable instrument of love, 
without which, with the best intentions, it might have 
failed of its end. Accordingly, it occupies a prominent 
place in the prophetic picture of the Messianic King and 
Servant of Jehovah, in which He appears as one on whom 
the spirit of wisdom and understanding should rest, and to 
whom the isles should look for instruction? The wisdom 
of Jesus showed itself conspicuously in the choice of men 
who “should be with Him,” and in the whole training to 
which He subjected them. The materials relating to this 
subject may be reckoned among the most certainly historical 
in the gospel records. Only the most reckless scepticism 
could call in question either the choice or the training.? 
A man with such irresistible attractions, and having so 
much to teach, could not fail to gather around Him dis- 
ciples; and that from among those who followed Him 
occasionally, He choose a limited number to be His constant 
companions is intrinsically probable. That He made the 
number twelve simply meant that in His mind the choice 
had an important connection with the interests of the king- 
dom. And surely it had in reality! That miscellaneous 
activity among the people in evangelism and healing, how- 
ever benevolent in spirit, would not by itself have amounted 

to much for the permanent fortunes of the kingdom. For 


1Tsa, xi. 2, xlii. 1-4. 

2 Havet, Le Christianisme et ses Origins, of recent writers the most sweep- 
ing in his sceptical treatment of both Old and New Testaments, regards the 
call of the twelve as probably apocryphal ; that there was a traitor among 
them he thinks also unlikely (vol. iv. pp. 38, 39), 


880 APOLOGETICS. 


all movements that are to be of lasting character, and to 
take their place in the general history of the world, the 
thorough instruction and discipline of the few is of greater 
moment than the transient emotional excitements of the 
many. Surely such an one as Jesus may be credited with 
fully understanding this! Therefore one cannot hesitate 
to believe that He chose men into whose ear He might 
speak the things which it would be their business after- 
wards to speak from the house-top, as scribes well instructed 
in the mysteries of the kingdom. As little should we 
hesitate to find in the Gospels a generally faithful record 
of the sayings of the Master, as repeated and reported by 
the men who had been with Him. 

Thus by the varied activities of His love and wisdom, 
Jesus did much for the founding of the kingdom during the 
years of His life spent in public ministry. But, strange as 
it may seem, He did even more for that end by His death. 
However it is to be explained, the fact is so. Had Jesus 
foreknowledge of the fact? According to the Gospels, He 
had. He is represented in the evangelic records as making 
mystic allusions to a tragic termination of His career from 
an early period, and some months before the close speaking 
to His disciples in plain, terribly realistic, terms of His 
approaching death. There is no good reason for regarding 
these representations as part of the veil that must be taken 
away in order to see the true Jesus. For the true Jesus, 
by common consent, was a man of exceptional, even unique, 
spiritual insight. Pure in heart, He saw God and the most 
recondite laws of the moral world clearly. He penetrated 
to the very heart of Old Testament prophecy, and grasped 
with unerring instinct its deepest essential meaning, as 
pointing to one God of grace over all and to a spiritual 
universal religion. Shall we doubt that His eye was 
caught and His heart set on fire by that most remarkable 
of Hebrew oracles concerning the suffering Servant of God ? 
Is it credible that He failed to see, what even Plato under- 
stood, that a perfectly righteous man must suffer for righteous- 


JESUS AS FOUNDER OF THE KINGDOM OF GoD. 381 


ness’ sake in this world, with His Hebrew Bible in His 
hand, full of illustrative instances and of theoretic questicn- 
ings as to their rationale? On the contrary, that the 
righteous man must suffer must have been a moral truism 
to Him. He brought this conviction with Him from His 
quiet home in Nazareth to His public ministry. And it 
was not long before He began to get new insight into 
it from personal experience. How could it be otherwise 
with one so antipharisaical, living in a community utterly 
given up to pharisaism? How soon the tender, sym- 
pathetic, loving spirit of Jesus would become aware of the 
pitilessness of egoistic sanctity, and know that there was 
nothing too dreadful to be feared from its conscientious 
malevolence ! 

That Jesus understood from the first that the righteous 
must suffer is not the thing to be wondered at. The 
wonder lay in the construction He put upon the suffering of 
righteousness. He regarded that, as everything else, with 
cheerfulness and hope; not as an accident or a dismal fate, 
but as the appointment of God, and the law of the moral 
world, ordained for beneficent ends. Therein lay His 
originality, His new contribution to the discussion of the 
world-old question, Why do the righteous suffer ? which for 
Old Testament saints had been an insoluble problem. 
Jesus solved the problem first for Himself, and then for all 
who bear His name. He said: Not only I must die for 
righteousness’ sake, but my death will prove a signal 
benefit for the kingdom of God. 

The words reported in the Gospels as having been spoken 
by Jesus, bearing on the significance of His death, are few. 
Their genuineness has been disputed, but without reason. 
It was to be expected that He would make some statements 
on the subject, and those ascribed to Him are entirely suit- 
able to His situation, and to the initial stage in the develop- 
ment of Christian thought. They leave much to be desired 
from the point of view of the dogmatic theologian, contain- 
ing only hints or suggestions of a doctrine rather than a 


382 APOLOGETICS, 


fully formulated doctrine; nevertheless, they teach lessons 
of real, rare value. Their general import is that Jesus died 
for righteousness’ sake in accordance with a law applicable 
to all who are loyal to the divine interest in the world;1 
that His death should possess redemptive virtue for the 
many ;* that He therefore died willingly in the spirit of 
self-sacrifice ;? and that out of regard to His death, God 
would freely forgive the sins of all citizens of the divine 
kingdom.4 

Sayings of Jesus bearing such meaning justify the great 
importance attached to His death in the Apostolic Church. 
Of this there are traces everywhere in the New Testament, 
and not least in the four Gospels) These Gospels, by their 
careful circumstantial narratives of the incidents connected 
with the Crucifixion, sufficiently attest how central was 
the place occupied by the death of the Lord Jesus in the 
minds of believers. The story of the Passion, told with 
such wondrous simplicity and pathos by all the evangelists, 
is not theology, but it is something better. It is the pro- 
duct of a piety which saw in the cross and its accompani- 
ments a conflict between the sin of the world and the 
patient love of God, and victory lying with the vanquished. 
It is no indignant tale of foul wrong done to the innocent, 
as it well might have been. The narrators have risen above 
indignation into perfect tranquillity of spirit, because what 
now chiefly occupies their thoughts is not man’s iniquity 
but Christ’s meekness. They have not got the length of a 
theory of atonement—at least, they state none; but they see 
on Calvary the fact of the Just One benignantly bearing 
indignities heaped upon Him by the unjust, and graciously 
forgiving His murderers. And what they see they say in 
severely simple terms without sentiment or reflection, leav- 
ing the story to speak for itself. And it has spoken, and 
continues to speak, with a power far beyond that of any 
possible attempt at theological interpretation. Stand by 


3 Matt. xvi. 21-28. 3 Matt. xx. 28. 
® Matt. xxvi. 13. $ Matt. xxvi. 28, 


waleiiasll 


cd 


pees se eS 


JESUS RISEN. 383 


the cross with Mary if you would feel the spell of the 
Crucified. Thence emanates an influence you will never 
be able to put fully into words. Theological formule may 
or may not satisfy the intellect, but it is the evangelic 
story of the Passion itself that moves the heart. Whatever 
formula we use must be filled with the story in order to 
become a vital religious force. Nowhere more than here 
have we occasion to note the unspeakable value of the 
Gospels to the Christian faith and life. “The love of Christ 
constraineth us,” writes Paul. He means the love of Christ 
in dying for sinners. What a poor idea we should have 
had of that love had the history of the Passion been with- 
held; how little we should have known of its constraining 
power } 


CHAPTER IV. 
JESUS RISEN. 


LITERATURE.—Strauss, Das Leben Jesus fiir das Deutsche 
Volk; Renan, Les Apotres; Weizsicker, Untersuchungen 
uber die Evang-Geschichte, 1864; Keim, Die Geschichte Jesu 
von Nazara, Band III.; Holsten, Zwm Evangelium des Petrus 
und des Paulus; Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ ; 
Milligan, Zhe Resurrection of our Lord (Croall Lectures, 
1881); Abbott, Philochristus and Onesimus; Wace, The 
Gospel and its Witnesses, 1883; Martineau, The Seat of 
Authority in Religion, pp. 358-378. 


The Apostle Paul represents the resurrection of Jesus as 
a fact of fundamental moment to Christianity. “If Christ 
be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is 
also vain.” Modern unbelief regards the fact of the 
resurrection as of no importance, maintaining that it is the 
spirit or image of Jesus continuing to work in the world 
about which alone we need to care. Some, indeed, acknow- 

11 Cor. xv. 14, 


384 APOLOGETICS, 


ledge that everything turns on the question as to the 
reality of the resurrection. Strauss speaks of that event 
as the point at which he must either admit the failure of 
the naturalistic and historical view of the life of J esus, and 
retract all he has written, or pledge himself to show the 
possibility of the result of the evangelic accounts—that is, 
the origin of the belief in the resurrection without any 
corresponding miraculous fact. 

Whatever diversity of opinion may prevail as to the 
importance of the historic fact, there is entire agreement as 
to the vital importance of the belief in the fact entertained 
by the apostles and the Church founded by them. All 
admit both the existence of the belief and the essential 
service it rendered in establishing and advancing the 
Christian religion. Baur, eg., was fully aware that without 
that belief Christianity could not have got started on its 
marvellous world-conquering career. That being so, it is 
obviously incumbent on all who undertake to give a purely 
natural account of the origin of Christianity to explain the 
origin of the belief in the resurrection of Jesus, This, 
however, they find great difficulty in doing. Baur made 
no attempt at solving the problem; as Strauss remarked, 
he avoided the burning question, and, assuming the faith 
in the resurrection as a fact not to be disputed, however 
mysterious, contented himself with tracing its historical 
effects. This reserve may have been due in part to 
prudential considerations, but it was due also, doubtless, 
to a vivid sense of the unsatisfactoriness of all past attempts 
to account for the belief in Christ’s rising from the dead 
on naturalistic principles. All theologians holding such 
principles have not been so discreet. Several have tried 
their hand at a solution of the hard problem, each in 
turn criticising his predecessor’s theory, and all together, 
by their mutual criticisms, making the work of refuting 
sceptical views on the subject a comparatively easy task 
for the apologist. 

1 Vide his New Life of Jesus. 


ER 


JESUS RISEN, 385 


The hypotheses that have been suggested for explaining 
away the resurrection may be reduced to these five :— 

1. That the whole affair was a matter of theft and false- 
hood—falsehood on the part of Jesus, or His friends, or 
both combined, in collusion with one another, for the pur- 
pose of propagating the belief that the Crucified One had 
risen again. 

2. That Jesus was never really dead; that after a 
temporary lapse of consciousness He revived, and was 
actually seen several times by some of His disciples; that 
He lived long enough to be seen of Paul; then, finally, died 
in some secret corner. 

3. That the appearances of the so-called “ risen ” Christ 
were purely subjective, due to the excited state of mind in 
which the disciples found themselves after the death of 
their beloved Master. They, of course, longed to see the 
dead One again; they thought they did see Him more 
than once; their thought was perfectly honest, but it was, 
nevertheless, a hallucination. This is the vision theory. 

4, That the appearances were not purely subjective, 
but had an objective cause, which, however, was not the 
veritable body of Christ risen from His grave, but the 
glorified Spirit of Christ producing visions of Himself for 
the comfort of His faithful ones, as if sending telegrams 
from heaven to let them know that all was well. 

5. That there were no appearances to be accounted for, 
but only a strong way of speaking on the part of the 
disciples concerning the continued life of the Crucified, 
which gave rise to a misunderstanding in the Apostolic 


3 Church that embodied itself in the traditions of Christo- 


phanies recorded in the Gospels. 

The first of these hypotheses, propounded by Reimarus 
and kindred spirits, is entirely out of date. Men of all 
schools in modern times would be ashamed to identify 
themselves with so base a suggestion; we may therefore 
leave it to the oblivion it deserves, and confine our atten- 


tion to the following four. 


1) le 


2B 


386 APOLOGETICS. 


The second hypothesis, that of an apparent death or 
swoon, was in favour with the-old rationalists represented 
by Dr. Paulus, and obtained for itself more respect than it 
deserves by the patronage of Schleiermacher. The explana- 
tion offered by those who espouse this hypothesis is as 2 
follows :——Crucifixion, even when both feet and hands are — 
pierced, causes little loss of blood, and kills only very 
slowly, by convulsions or by starvation. If then Jesus, — 
believed to be dead, was taken down from the cross after 
some six hours, the supposed death may very well have 
been only a swoon, from which, after lying in the cool 
cavern covered with healing ointments and_ strongly- 
scented spices, He might readily recover. In support of 
the suggestion, reference is made to an account by Josephus 
of the recovery of one of three acquaintances of his own — 
whom he found on the way crucified along with others, ’ 
and whom he asked permission to take down from their 
crosses. 

Admitting the abstract possibility of a recovery from 
swoon caused by pain and exhaustion, there is against this 4 
hypothesis the clear unanimous testimony of the evan- 
gelists that Jesus was actually dead, not to speak of the — 
statement in the Fourth Gospel that His side was pierced — 
by the unerring spear of a Roman soldier. Another con- — 
sideration fatal to the theory has been strongly put both by 
Strauss and by Keim. It is that a Jesus who had never ~ 
been dead coming from His tomb wearing an exhausted, — 
ghastly look could never have revived the hearts of the © 
disciples, or led them to believe in a Christ who had been — 
dead, and was alive again. Strauss states the objection i 
thus— 


“Tt is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead i 
out of the sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill, wanting — 
medical treatment, who required bandaging, strengthening, — 
and induleence, and who still at last yielded to His suffer- ‘ 
ings, could have given to the disciples the impression that | 
He was a conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of © 


4 


JESUS RISEN, 387 


Life, an impression which lay at the bottom of their future 
ministry. Such a resuscitation could only have weakened 
the impression which He had made upon them in life and 
in death; at the most, could only have given it an elegiac 
voice, but could by no possibility have changed their sorrow 
into enthusiasm, or have elevated their reverence into 
worship.” 4 


The swoon hypothesis finds little support among recent 
writers. The larger number of votes is given to the vision 
theory. Among the ablest supporters of this theory are 
Renan and Strauss. It may be the easiest way of making 
ourselves acquainted with its bearings to hear what they 
have to say in its favour. 

First, let us hear Renan— 


“Enthusiasm and love know no situations without escape. 
They make sport of the impossible, and rather than renounce 
hope they do violence to reality. Many words spoken by 
the Master could be interpreted in the sense that He would 
come forth from the tomb. Such a belief was, moreover, 
so natural that the faith of the disciples would have sufficed 
to create it. The great prophets Enoch and Elias did not 
taste of death. That which happened to them must happen 
to Jesus... . Death is a thing so absurd when it strikes 
the man of genius or of a great heart, that people cannot 
believe in the possibility of such an error of nature. Heroes 
do not die. .. . That adored Master had filled the circle of 
which He was the centre with joy and hope—could they be 
content to let him rot in the tomb?” ? 


Resolved that Jesus should not remain among the dead, 
the believing company were in a fit state of mind for see- 
ing the dead one alive again. The empty tomb—how 
emptied no one can tell—helped to make them more liable 
to hallucination. Mary Magdalene was the first to have 
a vision. She stood by the sepulchre weeping; she 
heard a light noise behind her. She turned; she saw a 
man standing; asked him where the body was; received 
for reply her own name, “Mary.” It was the voice that 

1 New Life, i, 412. _ § Vide Les Apétres, pp. 2, 8. 


388 APOLOGETICS. 


so often made her tremble. It was the accent of Jesus. 
The miracle of love is accomplished. Mary has seen and 
heard Him. After one has seen Him, there will be no 
difficulty in others seeing Him ; having visions will become 
infectious till it pass through the whole company of 
disciples. 

Such is the Renan style of treatment—sentimental, 
theatrical, Parisian. The appearances of Jesus are the 
creation of excited nerves and ardent expectations. The 
slightest outward occasion acting on so susceptible subjects 
- will produce an apparition. During a moment of silence 
some light air passes over the face of the assembled dis- 
ciples. At such decisive hours, a current of air, a creaking 
window, a chance murmur decides the belief of centuries. 
Nothing easier than to see the risen One; nothing easier 
than to comprehend the hallucinations of those devoted 
ones.? 

Strauss goes to work in a different way. He bases his 
argument on the fact that Paul classes the appearance of 
Jesus to himself with the earlier appearances to the dis- 
ciples, and reasons thus: The visions recorded in the 
Gospels were the same in nature as that with which Paul 
was favoured. But Paul’s vision was beyond question 
subjective, and Paul was a man predisposed to have such 
visions. He himself tells us that ecstatic conditions were 
of frequent occurrence with him.? His statement suggests 
attacks of convulsion, perhaps of epilepsy, as the physical 
cause of such experience, a suggestion confirmed by what 
he says elsewhere concerning the weakness of his body. 
A man with such a constitution was likely to have visions, 
in which were projected into space the thoughts and feel- 
ings of his mind at a crisis of great: excitement, like that 
of his conversion, when he was struggling against rising 


1 Vide Les Apétres, p. 5ff. Principal Fairbairn (Studies in the Life 
of Christ, p. 841) distinguishes Renan’s theory as the Phantasmal. It is 
certainly phantastic enough. 

9 2 Cor. xii. 1 ff. 


ax 3 Ve 


JESUS RISEN. 389 


convictions. And we can understand, in the light of his 
experience, how the disciples might have visions of Jesus 
after His death, That event was a great shock to their 
faith in Jesus as Messiah, and they must have felt a very 
strong impulse to overcome the contradiction somehow. 
Searching the Scriptures, they found passages which 
seemed to teach that it was appointed to Messiah to 
die, yet that death should not have power over Him. 
Hence they came at last, in the light of events, so to 
interpret the prophecies that they could include both death 
and resurrection in Messiah’s experience. Jesus had died; 
it was now to be expected that He should rise again, 
according to the Scriptures. They did expect and long for 
so welcome an event, and out of their expectation came the 
visions which led them to believe that their Master was 
risen. “The heart thinks; the hour brings.’ Not all at 
once, not so soon as the Gospels represent, did the visions 
come; for time was needed to bring about a revulsion 
from the depression caused by the Crucifixion to the excite- 
ment out of which the visions sprang. The disciples 
retired to Galilee, and there, brooding on the Scriptures 
and visiting familiar haunts, they gradually got into the 
state of mind required for seeing visions.’ 

The vision hypothesis has been sharply criticised, and 
many weak points have been detected in it. Among 
these may be noted, in the first place, that, according to 
Strauss, the more rational advocate of the theory, time 
was needed to develop the state of mind demanded, 
whereas, according to the records, the Christophanies 
began within three days of the Crucifixion, and were all 
comprised within a space of little more than a month. It 
is a disadvantage to the theory that it should be obliged 
to depart so seriously from the evangelic tradition. 

Assuming that the Christophanies began as early as 
represented in the Gospels, a second objection to the vision 
theory arises out of the fact that at the time the resur- 

1 New Life of Jesus, i. 430. 


390 APOLOGETICS. 


rection is reported to have taken taken place, and Jesus to 
have showed Himself alive after His Passion, the disciples 
were in so depressed a state of mind that subjective visions 
were the last thing in the world likely to befall them. All 
the Gospels testify to the depressed, unexpectant mood of 
the disciples at this period. Matthew states that on the 
occasion of Christ’s meeting with His followers in Galilee 
“some doubted.” Mark relates that when the disciples 
heard from Mary of Magdala that Jesus was alive, and 
had been seen of her, “they believed not.”2 Luke tells 
that the reports of the women seemed to the disciples as 
“idle tales.”* In place of general statements, John gives 
an example of the incredulity of the disciples in the case 
of Thomas. The women, too, appear not less unexpectant 
than the eleven. They set out towards the sepulchre on 
the morning of the first day of the week with the intention 
of embalming the dead body of Jesus. Unexpectant of the 
resurrection, the company of believers appear also in the 
records equally sceptical as to the reality of the appearances 
of the risen Lord. The disciples doubt now the sub- 
stantiality, now the identity, of the person who appears to 
them. Their theory was that what they saw was a ghost 
or mere phantom, just the theory of Renan and Strauss; 
and the fact that they entertained that theory makes it 
very difficult for us to receive it, and to believe with 
Strauss that the faith in Jesus as the Christ, after receiving 
through His death an apparently fatal shock, was sub- 
jectively restored by the instrumentality of the mind, the 
power of imagination, and nervous excitement. 

Besides the foregoing objections to the vision theory, others 
have been urged with great force by Keim. He rejects the 
theory chiefly on these«three grounds: (1) The simple, 
earnest, almost cold unfamiliar character of the manifesta- 


1 Matt. xxviii. 17. 

* Mark xvi. 11. This, however, belongs to the Appendix, which forms 
no part of the original Gospel. 

* Luke xxiv. 11, * John xx, 24-29, 


é 
7 


JESUS RISEN. ° 891 


tions; (2) the speedy cessation of the appearances; (3) the 
entire change in the mood of the disciples within a short 
time, from the excited state which predisposes to visions to 
clear knowledge of Christ’s Messianic dignity and energetic 
resolves to bear witness to the world for their risen and 
exalted Lord. In regard to the first Keim contends that 
the manifestations would not have possessed such a char- 
acter had they been purely subjective in their origin. In 
illustration of the second, he observes that the mental 
excitement which makes optical hallucinations possible 
demands a certain breadth and width of time, as is seen in 
the case of Montanism which filled half a century with its 
multiform follies. With reference to the third, he points 
out that the sudden change of mood in the disciples is 
contrary to the usual course of such morbid conditions. 
The excitement which created the visions ought to have 
lasted a considerable time, to have cooled down gradually, 
and to have terminated not in illumination and energy, but 
in dulness, languor, and apathy. 

These are forcible objections based on difficulties which 
the vision hypothesis cannot surmount. What then ? 
Does Keim accept the faith of the Catholic Church that 
Christ rose from the dead with the body in which He died 
revivified and transfigured, and in that body showed Him- 
self to His followers? He does not; and yet he admits 
that the Christophanies were not hallucinations, but had 
their origin in an objective cause. His idea is that Jesus, 
continuing still to live in His Spirit, produced the mani- 
festations which the disciples took for bond fide bodily 
appearances of their risen Master, to give them assurance 
that He still lived, and that death had not extinguished 
His being. In His own words— 


“Without the living Jesus the Messianic faith had been 
destroyed by the Crucifixion, and in the return of the apostles 
to the synagogue and to Judaism even the gold of Christ's 
teaching had been buried in the dust of oblivion. The 


greatest of men had passed away leaving no trace of Himself. 


392 APOLOGETICS, 


Galilee might for some time have related of Him truth and 
fiction, but His cause had produced no religious revolution, 
and no Paul. It lands in impossibilities to make the ordained 
of God so end, or to hand over His resurrection from the 
dead and for the dead to the uncertain play of visions. A 
sign of life from Jesus, a telegram from heaven was necessary, 
after the crushing overthrow of the Crucifixion, especially in 
the childhood of humanity. Even the Christianity of the 
present day owes to this telegram from heaven, first the 
Lord, and then itself... . The hope of immortality, other- 
wise a mere perhaps, has become through Christ’s word, and 
visibly through His deed, a bright light and clear truth,”! 


This new telegram hypothesis, as it may be called, goes, 
it will be observed, beyond the limits of naturalism. This 
its author frankly admits, Science, he tells us, is non- 
plussed by the hard problem. History can take cog- 
nisance only of the faith of the disciples that the Master 
was risen, and of the marvellous effect of this faith—the 
founding of Christianity. But while science and history must 
stop there, faith can go further; that faith which ascends 
from the world to God, from the natural to the super- 
natural, and can overstep the limits of sensible perception, 
and of the natural order to which science is bound down. 
In the exercise of this power it assures us not only that 
Jesus at death took His course to the world of spirits, but 
that it was He and no other who from that world gave to 
His disciples visions, and revealed Himself to His former 
companions, On this view the question of the resurrection 
as between Keim and the Catholic Church would seem to 
be a question of fact rather than one involving the theory 
of the universe. It is simply a question whether what was 
seen was the body that was laid in the tomb, or a vision 
bearing the likeness of that body, produced for the benefit 
of his disciples by the still living Spirit of Jesus, 

While not a whit more acceptable to thoroughgoing 
naturalism than the Catholic view, Keim’s theory has the 
disadvantage of being obliged to tamper with the gospel 


1 Jesu von Nazara, iii, 605, 


— 


JESUS RISEN. 393 


narratives. He calls in question, for example, the statement 
that the grave was found empty. Why adopt a view which 
renders that necessary without any compensating advantage ? 
Why not accept the view that the body seen was the body 
that had lain in the tomb? Is it because one cannot con- 
ceive of a dead body coming to life again? Can one any 
better conceive of the appearance of a body produced in 
space by the power of Christ’s will exerted from heaven ? 
Surely the heavenly telegram which comes out at the 
earthly end as the image of a body is as much a wonder 
as the rising of a dead body from the grave! 

One other observation may be made on this theory. It 
is open to the charge which is justly brought against the 
vision theory, that it makes the faith of the disciples rest 
on a hallucination. Christ sends a series of telegrams from 
heaven to let His disciples know that all is well. But 
what does the telegram say in every case? Not merely, 
My Spirit lives with God and cares for you; but, my body 
is risen from the grave. That was the meaning they put 
on the telegrams, and could not help putting. If that 
meaning was untrue to fact, how easy to have given another 
sort of sign! Why not emit a voice from heaven, saying: 
Be of good cheer, it is well with me, and I shall see to it 
that it shall be well with you till we meet ere long again. 
If the resurrection be an unreality, if the body that was 
nailed to the tree never came forth from the tomb, why 
send messages that were certain to produce an opposite 
impression? Why induce the apostles, and through them 
the whole Christian Church, to believe a lie? Truly this 
is a poor foundation to build Christendom upon, a bastard 
supernaturalism as objectionable to unbelievers as the true 
supernaturalism of the Catholic creed, and having the 
additional drawback that it offers to faith asking for bread 
a stone. 

The foregoing hypotheses all go on the assumption that 
there was a real experience of the disciples demanding 
explanation, They saw the real body of Jesus who had 


394 APOLOGETICS. 


not been actually dead, or they thought they saw the risen 
body of the dead Jesus and were mistaken, or they saw the 
real image of the body and were not mistaken. According 
to the most recent hypothesis there was no experience to 
explain. The Christophanies had no existence for the first 
disciples, but found a place only in the later traditions 
reported in the Gospels, so that what needs to be explained 
is simply the rise of the legend of the resurrection. Such 
is the view which, following hints from Weizsécker,! 
Dr. Martineau has espoused and advocated with his 
accustomed brilliancy. The fact basis of the legend in 
the experience of the disciples was, he thinks, simply this, 
that they believed that Jesus, the crucified, “ still lives, and 
only waits the Father’s time to fulfil the promises ;” lives, 
not like ordinary mortals, in “the storehouse of souls in the 
underworld,’ but with exceptional spirits, like Enoch, 
Moses, and Elijah, in the home of angels. This faith came 
to them as their consolation after they had recovered from 
the awful shock of Calvary, just as there comes to all, after 
the first burst of passionate grief over bereavement, the 
consolatory thought that the dead one still lives in a better 
world. It came to them all the sooner, because of the 
commanding personality of Jesus. They could not believe 
that death could be the extinction of such an one as He. 
He must live still, like the great ones of the Old Testament 
(Renan’s motto—* Heroes die not ”—would seem after all 
to be the key to the situation), This faith that Jesus 
continued to live was the faith in the resurrection for the 
first disciples, They said, indeed, that they had seen Jesus. 
They could not avoid saying this in their preaching, for not 
otherwise could they convey to others the strong conviction 


1 Vide Weizsicker, Das A postolische Zeitalter, p. 5. In his earlier work, 
Untersuchungen iiber die Hvangelische Geschichte, Weizsicker expressed & 
view more akin to that of Keim. He remarks that what the disciples 
“xperienced proceeded from a continuous influence upon them by Jesus after 
fis death. The Christophanies were not the product of the faith or 
phantasy of the disciples, but were given to them by a higher power. Vide 
Untersuchungen, pp. 572, 573. 


~ 


JESUS RISEN. $95 


of Christ’s celestial life which in their own case was the 
fruit of personal intercourse with Him. But they meant 
no more than Paul meant when twenty-five years later he 
claimed to have seen the Lord at the time of his conver- 
sion. Paul’s vision, so far as we can gather from himself 
—the accounts in the Acts, we are warned, are not to be 
trusted—was purely spiritual. And we are reminded that 
Paul puts his vision on a level with those of the first 
disciples. If, therefore, his vision was spiritual, so was 
theirs. But how, then, we naturally inquire, did the legend 
of Christophanies of a more substantial character arise ? 
The answer is, through the craving of the Jew and Pagan 
for something better than subjective visions in proof that 
Christ still lived. Under the influence of this craving, 

_ hearers of apostolic testimony would be prone to convert 

_ spiritual visions into optical ones, and the apostles them- 
selves would be tempted not to be very careful to correct 
misapprehension.? 

The new theory, of which the above is a brief outline, 
raises two questions. Does it give a true account of the 
experience of the first disciples; and does it give a probable 
explanation of the rise of the more materialistic legend of 
the resurrection ? 

On the furmer score the theory is very open to attack. 

_ It imputes to the disciples a Pagan or Greek conception of 
the life beyond as purely spiritual. But the faith of the 
Jew was not in the immortality of the soul but in a re- 
incorporated life of the man, which, though lacking the 
grossness of the mortal body, was still perceptible by the 
senses. Then the statement concerning the nature of Paul’s 
_ experience is far from indisputable. Great importance is 
justly attached to that experience. We are here in contact, 
not with hearsay or second-hand reports, but with the 
_ first-hand evidence of a witness of unimpeachable integrity 
and intelligence, telling us what happened to himself. 
Twice over in his First Epistle to the Corinthians he claims 
_ 1 The Seat of Authority in Religion, pp. 368-877. 


396 APOLOGETICS. 


to have seen the Lord.1_ Did he mean thereby merely that 
he had realised vividly Christ’s continued existence, or 
got a clear insight into the religious significance of his 
earthly history? That probably he did mean, but also 
more. We must remember Paul’s position at this period. 
He was confronted with men who called in question his 
apostolic standing as a means of undermining his influence 
as a teacher. What right had he to have a peculiar way 
of interpreting the gospel; he who had no apostolic 
authority like the eleven with whom he was at variance ? 


Conscious that he has this hostile attitude to reckon with, 


Paul says, among other things in self-defence, “I have 
seen the Lord.” It was certainly his interest to mean 
more thereby than a mere subjective vision. For his 
antagonists might very readily sugevest, What is a mere 
mental vision, a reflection of one’s own moods and ideas, 
to a dond fide companionship such as the eleven enjoyed ? 
It was to protect himself against such a suggestion that 
the apostle associated his own vision of the risen Christ 
with that of the first believers. Modern critics take 
advantage of the association to drag the visions of the 
disciples down to the supposed subjective level of the 
vision of Paul. But Paul’s interest and intention in 
classing the two together was to level his own vision up to 


the objectivity of the earlier Christophanies. He believed — 


_— 


that the eleven, that Peter, in particular, had seen the risen — 


Saviour with the eye of the body, and he meant to claim 
for himself a vision of the same kind.? 


The explanation given by the new theory of the rise of — 
the legend of a physical resurrection is equally unsatis- 


1 1Cor. ix. 1: ‘*Have ,.I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?” xv. 8: 
‘Last of all he was seen of me also.” 

2 That Paul believed in a corporeal resurrection is evident from the 
expression, ‘“‘He rose again the third day” (1 Cor. xv. 4). Menegoz 


remarks: ‘The mention of the third day would have no sense if Paul had __ 
not accepted the belief of the community of Jerusalem that on the third day — 
Jesus went forth alive from the tomb.”—Le Péché et la Redemption d’apres 


Saint £ aul, Pe 261, 


® 


g 
a 


JESUS RISEN. 397 


- factory. It amounts to this, that the faith in the continued 


spiritual existence of Jesus produced the later tradition of 
optical visions, not such visions the faith. It is a view 
analogous to that of Strauss concerning the rise of miracle 
myths, viz. that the faith that Jesus was the Messiah 
produced these miracle legends. In both cases alike the 
true order of causality is inverted. Unless there had been 
wonderful works done by Jesus they would never have 
believed Him to be Messiah, The postulate of Strauss’ 
own theory is that it belongs to Messiah to do such works. 
That postulate did not take its place in men’s minds for 
the first time after they had accepted Jesus as the Christ. 
In like manner it may be affirmed that without such 
visions as the Gospels report, the first disciples were not at 
all likely to have attained to firm faith that their deceased 
Master lived still. The element of truth in the older 


_ theories of Strauss and Keim is just this, that they both 


recognise that visions of some sort, subjective or objective, 
were necessary to produce in the minds of the disciples 
the belief that their Master was risen. 

Then observe what is implied in the assertion that the 
later tradition of optical visions arose from the strong 
manner in which the apostles expressed their faith that 
their Master lived in heaven. They said they had seen 
Jesus after His death, and their hearers understood them to 
mean they had seen Him in the body. They had to say they 
had seen, otherwise their hearers would not have believed 
that Jesus lived on. Is this not very like the reinstatement 
of pious fraud as a factor in the case, by reversion in part, 
or in @ refined form, to the long-abandoned theory of 
Reimarus? The apostles could hardly be ignorant how 
their statements were likely to be understood, and were in 
fact understood. 

The result of the foregoing inquiry is that all naturalistic 
attempts to explain away the resurrection, up to this date, 
have turned out failures, The physical resurrection remains. 
It remains, it need not be added, a great mystery. Much 


398 APOLOGETICS. 


that relates to this august event is enveloped in mystery. 
Not to speak of the discrepancy in the narratives, or the 
angelic agency, there is the fact that the resurrection body 
of Jesus appears even in the evangelic accounts a pneu- 
matic body, and the further fact that according to the 
teaching of Paul, as well as the suggestions of reason, flesh 
and blood, a gross corruptible body, can have no place in 


ia 


the kingdom of God, or in the eternal world. In the 


resurrection of Jesus, two processes seem to have been 
combined into one: the revivification of the crucified 
body, and its transformation into a spiritual body endowed 
with an eternal form of existence; the first process being 
merely a means to an end, the actual, if not the indis- 
pensable, condition of the second. 


CHAPTER V., 
JESUS LORD. 


Lirgrature.—Schleiermacher, Der Christliche Glaube ; 
Ullmann, Die Siindlosigheit Jesu; Wace, Christianity and 
Morality (Boyle Lectures, 1874-75); Abbott, Onesimus ; 
Pfieiderer, Paulinismus ; Menegoz, Le Péché et la Redemption 
dapres Saint Paul; Herrmann, Der Verkehr des Christen 
mit Gott; Curteis, The Scientific Obstacles to Christian Belief 
(Boyle Lectures, 1884); Bruce, The Miraculous Element in 
the Gospels (Lectures IX. and X.); Bornemann, Unterricht im 
Christentum: Lua Mundi (Essay V.); Le Conte, Evolution 
and tts Relation to Religious. Thought, 2nd ed. (especially 
chap. viii.). 


Jesus has for the Christian consciousness the religious 
value of God. He is the Zord Jesus, and as such the 
object of devoted attachment and reverent worship. 
What the metaphysical presuppositions of His divinity 
may be, and what the most fitting theological formulation 
of it, are questions on which different opinions have been 
and may continue to be entertained. It is even conceiv- 


7] 
ee 4 
tall 


JESUS LORD. 399 


able that the Church of the future may decline to discuss 
these questions, or to give them definite dogmatic answers, 
and may regard with the reverse of satisfaction the answers 
given in past ages. There is reason to believe that even 
now there exists in many Christian minds a feeling of 


coldness, not to say aversion, to the definition of Christ’s 


person handed down to us from ancient councils, as con- 
sisting of two distinct natures combined in the unity of a 
single personality. This is not to be mistaken for a denial 
of Christ’s divinity. It may be a morbid mood, a phase of 
that general aversion to precise theological determinations 
which is an outstanding characteristic of the present time ; 
but it is compatible with an attitude of heart towards Jesus . 
in full sympathy with the faith of the Catholic Church 
concerning Him, even in the most orthodox generations.” 
That Jesus had the religious value of God for, and was 
worshipped by, the whole Apostolic Church is certain. 
They called Him Lord, Kvpuos, the equivalent for Jehovah 
in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. With- 
out making too much of the fact, it may be held to 
imply this, at least, that what Jehovah was to Israel, 
that Jesus was to the religious consciousness of Chris- 
tians, the object of that specific worship by which they 
were distinguished from the rest of the world. There 
is no difficulty in ascertaining the genesis of this faith of 
the first disciples in Jesus as divine. It was not the 
result of speculative thought, it need not even be regarded 
as a direct revelation unmediated by any spiritual experi- 
ence. It sprang out of the impression made on their 
minds by the facts of Christ’s earthly history. Three 


1 Of this attitude the Ritschl school may be taken as representatives in 
Germany, and the late Dr. Hatch (vide his Hibbert Lectures) in England. 
On this anti-dogmatic tendency the late Professor Green remarks: ‘‘ Proteus 
will not be so bound. The individual, consciously or unconsciously, will 
formulate the Christian experience, and left to himself will formulate it 
inadequately. Released from the dogma of the Church, he will make a 
dogma of his own, which will react upon and limit the experience.” — Works, 
vol, iii., Essay on “‘ Christian Dogma,” p. 182. 


400 APOLOGETICS, 


main sources of the faith can be specified: the holiness of 
Jesus, His death, and His resurrection. 

At the Capernaum crisis, when a disenchanted crowd 
deserted Jesus in disgust, Peter, according to the account 
in the Fourth Gospel, made in the name of the twelve the 
confession: “ We believe and know that Thou art the Holy’ 
One of God.”* This may be taken to be a faithful reflec- 
tion of the feeling which arose in the minds of the disciples 
from the time they began to be closely associated with 
Jesus, and steadily grew in strength and vividness as their 
opportunities of observation increased. More and more it 
was borne in upon them that the Master they followed 
was exceptional, unique, in spirit and character. They 
were conscious that in wisdom and goodness He far sur- 
passed themselves; and as they looked around they noticed 
a similar contrast between Him and all other men. Even 
the hostile attitude towards Him of the paragons of the 
righteousness in vogue tended to deepen their sense of 
His moral worth. It made them note more carefully the 
characteristics of His goodness, and become more fully 
aware how rare was the type of goodness He represented. 
It forced on their attention a remarkable moral pheno- 
menon which, but for the glaring contrast and sharp 
conflict between their Master and the Pharisees, might 
have been treated as a thing of course. The contrast and 
conflict, doubtless, involved a keen trial of their faith and 
fidelity. In Christ’s company they had to learn to bear 
isolation, and to become weaned from the common habit of 
taking current opinion, or the majority, as the guide in 
moral judgment. They were strongly tempted to think 
that the thousands on one side must be right, and the One 
on the other side must be wrong, They could not both 
be right, for the contrast was too glaring; but how hard to 
believe that so many men reputedly righteous and saintly 
were missing the mark, and that the “righteousness of the 
scribes and Pharisees” was of no value! Nothing will 

2 John vi. 69. 6 &yi0s rod Osod is the reading in the best MSS. 


JESUS LORD, 401 


help in such a case but personal spiritual discernment, and 
courage to follow our own moral instincts. These qualities 
the disciples possessed in sufficient strength to enable them 
to hold on to Jesus when the multitude deserted Him, 
_ and the wise and holy blasphemed Him. And their reward 
was a great discovery ; that in this forsaken and misjudged 
Man a new revelation of God was given. Whence this 
_ unexampled character, this wholly original way of thinking, 
feeling, and acting? Obviously not from the spirit of the 
time whereof the Pharisees are the exponents, but from the 
Spirit of God. The unholy one, as men esteem Him, is 
, Just on that account the Holy One of God, and through 
Him we may know, as has never been known before, what 
Divine Holiness is. 

The death of Jesus was a mighty factor in the exaltation 
of Him to the place of Lord in the hearts of believers, 
In the Crucifixion the two opposed judgments concerning 
Jesus found their culminating expression. For the false 
_ dying world of Judaism He became thereby the supremely 
unholy, profane, accursed ; for the new Christian world the 
supremely Just and Blessed. To the one Jesus was the 
-abhorred criminal, to the other the revered martyr. But 
this is by no means the whole truth. For the company 
of disciples the Crucified was much more than the true 
faithful witness, worthy of profoundest veneration because 
He shrank not from the sacrifice of His life for the 
truth. He was the Saviour who died for the sin of the 
world; of His enemies, of those who believed in Him. 
How they came to regard the death of Jesus in this light 
need not here be discussed. It is enough to say that, 
beyond doubt, the members of the esis Church with 
one consent did so regard it. The point now to be noted 
is, how powerfully and irresistibly the thought of Jesus 
dying as a Saviour led on to the worship of Him as 
Lord. With rapturous enthusiasm believers in the 
crucified Redeemer crowned Him their Divine King. 


“Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sla 
. pay 


ua < 
a= 
ny 


402 APOLOGETICS, 


ever.” 
The doxology of the Apocalypse strikes the keynote of 
a strain which runs through the whole New Testament. 


of 
in His own blood, be glory and dominion for ever and 


> 
4 


Everywhere there is a close connection between Soteriology 3 


and Christology: Jesus Lord because Saviour. This is — 


specially notable in the leading epistles of Paul, which, 


because of their all but unquestioned authenticity, and the — 
exceptional significance of the religious personality of their — 
author, are invaluable sources of information as to the — 


genesis of the idea cherished by the Apostolic Church 


concerning the person of Jesus. ‘The title Lord applied to | 


are 


a t 


Jesus, as Paul uses it, means “the One who by His death © 


has earned the place of sovereign in my heart, and whom I + 


feel constrained to worship and serve with all my powers.” 


- 
ae 


2 


So, for example, in the text: “God forbid that I should — 


glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom — 
the world is crucified to me, and I to the world;”2 and 
in that other: “ Being justified by faith, we have peace with 


God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have — 


access by faith into this grace wherein we stand.” In _ 
both the title “Lord” is used with conscious intention to 


acknowledge a debt of gratitude. Paul recognises Christ’s 


worthiness to be called Lord because He died for man’s 
salvation, and as the Lord to be preferred to the whole 
world, and all its possessions and enjoyments. In certain 


New Testament texts, God is represented as making the 


Crucified One “Lord,” in compensation for indignities 
meekly endured, and as the reward of voluntary self- 


f 
& 
; 
“* 
i 
: 


ae 


etre EARL pg Micah 


A RE 


humiliation. In the above-cited utterances of Paul, we eg 
see Christian faith and love co-operating with God in the — 


exaltation of the Redeemer. 


The resurrection also, as was to be expected, greatly — 
helped early disciples to rise to a lofty conception of — 
Christ’s person. A most interesting and instructive — 
example of the manner in which it influenced Christian — 


' Rev. i. 5, 6. 2 Gal. vi. 14. > Rom. v. 1. 


JESUS LORD. | 403 


thought concerning the Founder of the faith is supplied in 
the statement with which Paul commences his Epistle to 
the Romans. He desires apparently, at the very outset, to 
explain to the Roman Church his Christological position, 

as it is obviously one of his principal aims in that writing 
_ to indicate to that important Church how he conceives the 
Christian faith in general. A statement made with. such 
an aim would be well weighed in every phrase and word, 
and cannot be treated as an obiter dictum. Note, then, 
what Paul says: The gospel he is commissioned to preach 
is “concerning One who is God’s Son, made of the seed of 
David according to the flesh, and who was constituted 
God’s Son in power, according to the spirit of holiness from 
the resurrection of the dead.” The person so described is 
then identified with Jesus Christ, who is finally denomi- 
nated “our Lord,” the title given to Him in common by 
all Christians. Two points are specially noteworthy in 
this passage,—the reference to the spirit of holiness, and 
the function assigned to the resurrection of Jesus as an 
event through which He was constituted the Son of God 
“in power.” Therefrom we learn that the holiness of 
_ Jesus, and His rising from the dead, not less than His 
redeeming death, played an important part in the develop- 
ment of the apostle’s conception of Christ’s person, The 
three together were the elements out of which grew his 
Christological idea. The holy life of Jesus evidently had no 
small share in leading Paul to see in Him the Son of God 
in a unique sense. The phrase “according to the spirit of 
holiness” stands in manifest contrast with the phrase 
“according to the flesh.” It signifies that Christ, though 
partaker of human flesh, was free from the moral taint 
ordinarily associated with the odp& On the ground of 
that moral purity, Paul ascribed to Jesus a Divine Sonship 
involving at least. ethical identity with God. But he 
appears to attach still more importance to the resurrection 
as a basis for the doctrine of Christ's Sonship. Son of 

1 Rom. i. 3, 4 


404 APOLOGETICS. 


God, all through His earthly life, in virtue of His holiness, 
Jesus, according to the apostle, was constituted God’s Son in 
an emphatic degree by the resurrection. ‘“‘Constituted,” 
for the rendering “declared” in the Authorised Version, and 
retained in the Revised, does not do justice to the word 
used by Paul. It points to something more than manifesta- 
tion, to a change in Christ’s condition. Probably what the 
apostle has in mind is the transformation of Christ’s outer 
physical nature, the replacement of the body of humiliation 
by a spiritual glorious body, having as its result that the 
risen One was henceforth altogether a spiritual being, the 
pneumatic heavenly man, His very body radiant with 
heaven's light as His Spirit was spotlessly pure. The idea 
is that, previous to the resurrection, Jesus was the Son of 
God on the inner side of His being (that is assumed, not 
negatived, by opscGévros), but after the resurrection became 
Son of God both on the inner and on the outer side, the 
verb having its full force in the sense of “to constitute” in 
reference to the latter. The expression “in power” (é 
Suvdper), in harmony with this view, must be taken as 
meaning—fully, out and out, altogether, without qualifica- 
tion, implying that the resurrection was the actual intro- 
duction of Christ into the full possession of Divine Sonship 
so far as thereto belonged, not only the inner of a holy 
spiritual essence, but also the outer of an existence in 
power and heavenly glory.} 

Such were the feelings and trains of thought through 
which Paul and other believers in the apostolic age were 
led on to faith in the divine significance of Jesus. They 
point out the road along which all must travel to the same 
goal, if their faith is to have any true value and virtue. 
A ready-made dogma concerning the divinity of Christ 
accepted as an ecclesiastical tradition can be of little service 
to us. It may very easily be of serious disservice, acting 
as a veil to hide the true Jesus from the eye of the soul. — 
The only faith concerning Jesus as the Divine Lord worth 

1 So Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, p. 129, 


JESUS LORD. 405 


possessing is that which springs out of spiritual insight into 
its historical basis, and is charged with ethical significance. 
Such a faith calls Jesus Lord by the Holy Ghost, and is legi- 
timate, wholesome, and fruitful in beneficent effects. What 
more legitimate and wholesome than to think of Jesus, the 
uniquely good, as the very Son of God, absolutely one with 
God in mind, will, and spirit? Then we are assured that 
Jesus is a veritable revelation of the Father. The Son 
hath declared Him. And the revelation is welcome. If 
God be like Jesus, the world has cause to be glad. The 
worship of Jesus as God is the worship of a goodness 
which inspires trust and hope in every human breast. 
What more legitimate and wholesome, again, than the 
worship of the Crucified? It means that self-sacrificing 
love is placed on the throne of the universe, that God does 
not keep aloof from the world in frigid majesty, but enters 
into it freely as a burden-bearer, stooping to conquer His 
own rebellious children. On the metaphysical side the 
doctrine may be encompassed with difficulty, but ethically 
it is worthy of all acceptation. 

The foregoing account of the genesis of apostolic faith 
in the divinity of Jesus may create the impression that the 
title Lord given to Him was merely the exaggerated expres- 
sion of admiration for His character and of gratitude for 
His redeeming love. It would be a mistake, however, to 
suppose that the person of Jesus was not a subject of theo- 
logical reflection for the first generation of believers. There 
are distinct traces of this in the epistles of Paul; for ex- 
ample, in the statement in the Epistle to the Romans, 
“For this Christ died and rose that He might exercise lord- 
ship over both dead and living,”? in which the divine right 
of Jesus to rule over the affections and destinies of all men 
living or dead is proclaimed in a theoretical connection of 


1 Herrmann (Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott, p. 118, 2te Aufl.) 
remarks : ‘‘The right confession of the Godhead of Jesus depends on experi- 
ence of the work which God performs through Jesus on the human soul,” 

* Rom. xiv. 9, 


406 APOLOGETICS. 


thought. A still more decided example may be found in 
the eighth chapter of 1st Corinthians, where the apostle 
speaks of Christ’s place in the universe in a connection of 
thought which gives to his statement great doctrinal value.} 
With reference to the practice of eating meat offered in 
sacrifice to idols, he has strongly asserted the truth of the 
Jewish monotheistic creed: “There is no God, except one.” 
One wonders what after this he will say concerning Jesus. 


He gratifies our curiosity by going on immediately after to | 


make this statement: “For while it may be the case that 
there are gods so called, whether in heaven or in earth, as 
there be gods many and lords many, yet for us (Christians) 
there is one God the Father from whom are all things and 
we for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ through, or on 


account of, whom are all things, and we (in particular, as” 


a spiritual creation) through Him.” Here we, as it were, — 


surprise Paul in the act of solving a delicate problem. As 
becomes a Jew he treats as nullities the gods and lords of 


the Gentiles, regarding them as gods only in name (Geou — 


Neyouevot), and over against these nullities he sets one real — 
@cos and one real Kupios. His faith in the one he has © 
inherited from his Jewish fathers, his faith in the other has — 


sprung out of his belief in Jesus as his Redeemer. How — 


are the two faiths to be combined, how are their objects to 


be conceived as related to each other? The question 


involves, apparently, a dilemma for one by birth a Jew, and — 
by conversion a Christian. Either he must hold fast by | 
the abstract monotheism of Judaism and, in deference — 


thereto, negative the worship of Christ under the title of 


Kvpwos as an idolatry, or he must give full effect to his 


Christian consciousness and worship Jesus as a Divine Lord, 
and modify his conception of deity so far as to make the 
divine unity compatible with plurality. The title “ Father” — 
appended to the Divine name in the text above quoted — 
indicates that the apostle’s mind gravitated in the direction — 


of the latter alternative, and adopted as the solution of the 
11 Cor. viii. 4-6, ® The reading varies, Codex B. has 3y’ dy, 


iS 


JESUS LORD. 407 


theological problem: Jesus Christ my Lord, the Son of 
the one true God the Father. 

The resurrection could not but stimulate an active mind, 
such as that of Paul, to theological reflection. To its 
influence, probably, may be traced the theorem of the pre- 
existence of Christ enunciated more or less clearly in some 
Pauline texts—eg. in Gal. iv. 4, “God sent forth His Son;” 
and in 2 Cor. viii. 9,“ Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus, 
that being rich He became poor.”* The pre-existence may 
be viewed as the pendant and complement of the resurrec- 
tion. Through the resurrection and exaltation Jesus in a 
sense, according to Paul, became divine. He was thereby, 


as we learned from a notable Pauline text, constituted the 


Son of God in power. But divinity in the proper sense, as 
distinct from apotheosis, cannot begin to be. The divine 
is eternal. Therefore He who was man, and thereafter was 
exalted to God’s right hand, must have been with God 
before He came into the world, So the apostle seems to 
have reasoned, if we may view the pre-existence theorem 
as the product of reasoning rather than as a direct re- 
velation.? 

It does not appear that the sinlessness of Jesus raised in 
Paul’s mind any questions as to the manner of His coming 
into the world. That he earnestly believed Jesus to be 
sinless he has put beyond doubt by describing Him in a 


1Some render irrdysvery ** was poor,” supposing the reference to be to 
Christ’s habitual condition on earth. While the verb by itself might bear 
this sense, the aorist excludes it, as implying an act completed at a given 
point of time. 

2 Bornemann says: ‘* The thought of the pre-existence was not communi- 
cated supernaturally tothe apostles, or originated by Paul, or unfamiliar in 
that age. It was simply the natural application to Jesus of an attribute 
already ascribed to Messiah in Jewish theology. Strange, new, and peculiar 
as the idea seems to us, it was current then to express the higher, God- 
derived, universal significance and superhuman perennial worth of certain 
persons and things. It was applied, e.g., to Moses, Enoch, Adam, the taber- 
nacle, the temple, the tables of the law.” He remarks that the category 
strictly applied involves some peril to the real humanity of Jesus, Vide 
Unterricht im Christentum, p. 93, 


408 APOLOGETICS. 


well-known text as “Him who knew no sin.”? But no- 
where in his epistles can we find any clear reference to an 
immaculate conception or supernatural birth. The con- 
trary view, that Jesus came into the world in the ordinary 
way, has been supposed to be indicated by the words “ made 
of the seed of David according to the flesh;”? but the 
utmost that can be said is that we might naturally put 
that construction on them in absence of information to the 
contrary. The expression is quite reconcilable with the 
miraculous birth. To the latter we might even with plausi- 
bility discover a positive allusion in the peculiar phrase 
used by the apostle in his Epistle to the Galatians concern- 
ing Christ’s birth, “ made (or born) of a woman”;® but it 
is doubtful if, without the Gospels in our hands, it would 
have suggested to our minds birth from a virgin. 

It does not follow from the absence of express allusions 
to the topic that Paul’s mind was not exercised on it, any 
more than it follows from the absence of allusion in his 
epistles to many of the most memorable facts in Christ’s 
life that he was in ignorance concerning them.‘ Still less 
should we be justified in drawing the more sweeping infer- 
ence that, for the whole generation to which Paul belonged, 
the problem of the manner of Christ’s birth had no exist- 
ence. The best evidence that Christians were thinking on 
the subject is to be found in the narratives at the beginning 
of the first and third Gospels. The histories of the infancy 
in Matthew and Luke do not belong to the original Synopti- 


12 Cor. v. 21. 

2 Rom. i. 8. So Pfleiderer. : ® Gal. iv. 4 

* Menegoz thinks that Paul’s mind was not occupied with the question, 
and that it could have no doctrinal importance for him. ‘The apostle did 
not dream of making the holiness of Christ depend on the mode of His birth. 
He had too much logic for that. Whether the human nature of Christ pro- 
ceeded from a woman alone, or from the union of a man anda woman, it 
would make no difference in Paul’s ideas as to the heredity of sin. In the 
theology of the apostle the holiness of Christ is retated to another origin than 
to the mode of terrestrial conception. He considered the birth of Christ in 
every way supernatural. The Incarnation was for Him a miraculous fact 
whatever its mode.”—Le Péché et la Redemption, p. 182. 


as 


JESUS LORD. 409 


cal tradition. They are a later addition prefixed to the 
evangelic story of the public ministry and the final sufferings 
of Jesus. They owe their presence in the latest redactions 
of the memoirs of the Lord to the desire of disciples to 
know all that could be known concerning Him from the 
beginning of His earthly life. By the actual story they 
tell concerning the birth of Jesus, they give a worthy and 
acceptable account of the commencement of a life which 
believers regarded as sinless. They embody the faith in 
the sinlessness of Jesus in the form of a history of His birth 
from a virgin through the power of the Holy Ghost. The 
history is not the creation of the faith, a mere legendary 
expression of the belief that the Lord of the Church was a 
man altogether free from moral taint, but it came late in 
the day when believers in a sinless Christ began to wonder 
how such an one as He entered into human life. It was 
welcome to them as a worthy account of the birth into 
this time-world of the Holy One, of the congruous starting- 
point of a life that knew no sin. 

Some modern theologians, accepting the moral miracle of 
sinlessness, reject the physical miracle, which, according to 
the Gospels, was its actual, if not necessary, presupposition ;? 
or at least treat it as a thing of no religious importance 
so long as the moral miracle is believed in.? The element 
of truth in these views is that the supernatural birth is not 
an end in itself, but only a means to an end. It is the 
symbol, the sinlessness being the substance. A sinless 
Christ is the proper object of faith. Under what conditions 
such a Christ is possible is a very important question, but 
it belongs to theology rather than to religion. Yet it has 


1So Dr. Edwin Abbott. Vide Onesimus, Book III. par. 7. 

2So Schleiermacher, Der Christliche Glaube, Bd. II. pp. 67, 84, 85, 
Vide my Miraculous Element in the Gospels, pp. 352, 353. 

3 Bornemann remarks: ‘The discussion of the presuppositions of the person 
and work of Christ is more the affair of theology than of the Christian 
religion. Jesus did not appear that we men might scientifically solve the 
mystery of His being, but that He might offer to us the solution of the 
practical riddles of human life.” — Unterricht im Christentum, p. 96. 


410 APOLOGETICS, 


to be remembered that faith is ever in a state of unstable 
equilibrium while the supernatural is dealt with eclectically; 
admitted in the moral and spiritual sphere, denied in the 
physical. With belief in the virgin birth is apt to go 
belief in the virgin life, as not less than the other a part of 
the veil that must be taken away that the true Jesus may 
be seen as He was—a morally defective man, better than 
most, but not perfectly good." 

That belief in the virgin life must go there can be little 
doubt, if we are to carry out to its utmost consequences a 
purely naturalistic theory of the universe. A sinless man 
is as much a miracle in the moral world as a virgin birth 
ig a miracle in the physical world. If we are to hold a 
speculative view of the universe which absolutely excludes 
miracle, then we must be content with a Christianity which 
consists in duly appreciating a great but not perfect char- 
acter, or cease to profess Christianity at all. If, on the 
other hand, to satisfy the demands of our religious nature 
we insist on retaining the moral miracle, then we must 
provide ourselves with a theory of the universe wide enough 


to make room for as much of the miraculous element as. 


may appear to the wisdom of God necessary for realising 
His great end in creating and sustaining the universe. 
Such is the Christian theory of the universe, as expounded 
in an early chapter of this work? It regards the kingdom 
of God as the supreme aim of God in creation and _provi- 
dence. Whether under this view miracle in the physical 
sphere shall actually come in, and to what extent, remains 
to be seen, but it certainly may. And though the scientific 
spirit indisposes all who come under its influence to believe 
that miracles actually happen, it has no right in the name 
of science to negative the possibility of their happening. 
It has been shown bya master both in science and in 
Christian philosophy how that possibility may be provided 

* So Martineau, Seat of Authority, p. 651, in opposition to old orthodox 


Socinianism. 
2 Book I. chap. ii. 


a : a 


AE ae wae a ede RL eae ae ee ee ee 


JESUS LORD. 411 


for without in the least disturbing the laws of the actual 
universe, viz. by finding the sphere within which the 
miraculous Power immediately works in the ultimate 
elements which for the actual universe remain unchanged, 
though not in themselves unchangeable, 

Let us hear Lotze on this point +— 


“The closed and hard circle of mechanical necessity is not 
immediately accessible to the miracle-working fiat, nor does 
it need to be, but the inner nature of that which obeys its 
laws is not determined by it but by the meaning (Sinn) of 
the world. This is the open place on which a power that 
commands in the name of this Meaning can exert its influ- 
ence, and if under this command the inner condition of the 
elements, the magnitudes of their relation and their opposi- 
tion to each other, become altered, the necessity of the 
mechanical course of the world must unfold this new state 
into a miraculous appearance, not through suspension but 
through strict maintenance of its general laws.” 


The bias of faith in the present time is to make itself 
entirely independent of the miraculous. But the thing 
is impossible. In this connection the position taken up 
by such writers as Schleiermacher and Dr. E. Abbott is 
peculiarly interesting, as showing what faith demands in 
the way of the miraculous, even in the case of those whose 
general attitude towards that element is one of scepticism 
and aversion. They must, at all hazards, have a sinless 
Christ, a man in whom God was immanent in a unique 
superlative degree, and this, as already remarked, is a moral 
miracle. Of course, one can understand how believing men, 
in sympathy with the anti-miraculous spirit of science,should 
endeavour to make this solitary phenomenon in the history 
of mankind appear as natural as possible. That means 
attempting to bring faith in an ideally-perfect man into 
line with the doctrine of evolution. Fruitful suggestions 
towards a solution of this problem must ever be welcome, 
One is to regard Christ, like all other great originators, as 

1 Mikrokosmus, Bd. II, p, 54, Eng. tr. p. 451, 


412 APOLOGETICS, 


a “sociological variation,” the most remarkable of all, and 
as such unaccountable." The most recent attempt to state 
“the relation of evolution to the idea of the Christ” is that 
of Professor Le Conte, whose line of thought is to this effect: 
“ As organic evolution reached its goal and completion in 
man, s0 human evolution must reach its goal and comple- 
tion in the zdeal man, i.e. the Christ.” To finding in Christ 
the goal of human evolution, the realisation of the human 
ideal, it cannot properly be objected that the goal, the ideal 
should appear at the end of the course of evolution. This 
holds good of animal evolution, but not of human evolution, 
and for this reason, that in the latter process a new factor 
comes into play, viz. “the conscious voluntary co-operation 
of the human spirit in the work of its own evolution.” The 
method of this new factor consists in the formation, and 
especially in the voluntary pursuit, of ideals. Therefore 
the ideal in this case must come either in imagination or 
in fact, preferably in fact, in the course of the evolutionary 
process, and notat the end. “At the end the whole human 
race, drawn upward by this ideal, must reach the fulness 
of the stature of the Christ.” 2 

This is an inviting train of reasoning, but not above 
criticism. Not to speak of the objections likely to be raised 
by a naturalistic philosophy to which it is an axiom, that 
the idea never realises itself in individuals, but only in the 
totality of individuals? there is the more obvious objec- 
tion anticipated by the author himself that all ideals are 
relative and temporary, that “ideals are but milestones 
which we put successively behind us while we press on to 
another.” How then did it come about that the absolute 
moral ideal appeared in this world so long ago? It wasa 
miracle. To this statement the author above referred to 
would not probably object. His theory provides for the 


1 Vide on this my Miraculous Element in the Gospels, pp. 848, 349, with 
the references to literature bearing on the subject. 

* Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought, 2nd ed. pp. 860-364, 

* Vide Ullmann, Die Siindlosigkeit Jesu, p. 159, 


PAUL. 413 


miraculous. A goal in evolution, as he views it, is “not 
only a completion of one stage, but also the beginning of 
another and higher stage—on a higher plane of life with 
new and higher capacities and powers unimaginable from 
any lower plane.” Applied to Christ this implies that He 
Himself was miraculous, and that with Him came into the 
world “new powers and properties unimaginable from the 
human point of view, and therefore to us seemingly super- 
natural, i.e. above owr nature,” * 


CHAPTER VI. 


PAUL, 


Lirerature.—Baur, Paulus der <Apostel Jesw Christi; 
Renan, Les Apétres and St. Paul; Holsten, Zwm Evangelium 
des Petrus und des Paulus; Pfleiderer, Paulinismus; Reuss, 
Theologie Chretienne (translated); Sabatier, L. Apdtre Paul 
(translated); Farrar, The Life and Work of St. Paul; 
Matheson, The Spiritual Development of St. Paul. 


The importance of the Apostle Paul to Christianity is 
universally acknowledged. The tendency, indeed, alike in 
orthodox and in heterodox schools of theology, has been 
rather to exaggerate than to under-estimate his significance. 
On the Tiibingen theory, eg., Christianity would have been a 
failure but for Paul. From the point of view of Dr. Baur, 
while it was a vital condition of the new religion getting 
started on its career that faith in the resurrection of Jesus 
should somehow take possession of the minds of His dis- 
ciples, yet that was not enough. Before Christianity could 
be said to be fairly on the march, it was necessary that the 
two opposite principles which met in the person of Jesus 
in immediate unity should find adequate representatives ; 
that there should be some adopting as their watchword : 


1 Evolution, etc., p. 364. Foran attempt to bring faith in the Incarnation 
into line with Evolution, vide Lux Mundi, Essay V. 


414 APOLOGETICS. 


Jesus the Christ promised to the fathers, and others who, 
while also believing Jesus to be the Christ, should inscribe 
on their banner the glorious principle—Christianity the 
universal religion. Given these the new religion was sure 
of a great future, in accordance with the historical law of 
development by antagonism. According to Dr. Baur there 
was uo risk of the narrower, national view failing to find 
advocates numerous if not influential. It might be taken 
for granted that the average Jew believing Jesus to be 
the Messiah would be willing to change only as little as 
possible, would, in fact, remain as he had been, simply — 
adding to his former beliefs and practices the conviction 
that in Jesus the Messiah had come, and fellowship with 
those who shared that conviction with himself. The 
difficulty and uncertainty would all be in the other direc- 
tion: to find one or more worthy representatives of the 
universalistic spirit of Jesus. By the nature of the case 
they must be few; for they must be superior men, rising 
above the average level in genius, earnestness, force of 
mind and character, men belonging to the aristocracy of 
humanity, the number of which is always limited. What 
if such rare exceptional persons, capable of being vehicles 
of the universalistic idea, should not turn up? The risk 
is as real as it would be fatal; it will be well if the spirit 
of universalism shall find so much as one solitary effective 
representative. In absence of a living Providence, you 
cannot be quite sure that even one shall be forthcoming, 
though it is open to the naturalistic theologian to allay his 
anxiety on that score by the consoling reflection that at 
every world-crisis the needed hero does make his appear- 
ance, not sent by God indeed, but produced by the uncon- 
scious Forces at work in the great universe. Fortunately 
in the case of nascent Christianity the needed hero did 
appear in due time. And, of course, he was an epoch- 
making person, being nothing less than the man through 
whom the personal work of Jesus was saved from being an 
abortive attempt at the establishment of a new religion, 


eer Ne 


PAUL. 415 


Such in substance is the view taken by the famous 
founder of the Tiibingen school of criticism as to the value 
of Paul as a factor in the origination of historic Christianity.” 
It errs on the side of exaggeration. Dr. Baur makes too 
much of Paul. God could have done even without him, 
and Christianity as a world-religion would have got started 
on its career even though he had remained to the end of 
his days a blasphemer and a persecutor. It is without 
doubt a just view that a Christianity not universal in spirit 
would have been an unfaithful reflection of the spirit of 
Jesus, and that such a Christianity would have had no 
chance of attaining to permanence and power. But it is 
not the fact that Paul was the sole exponent of univer- 
salism. There is every reason to believe that there was a 
party in the Palestine Church represented by such men as 
Stephen and Barnabas, which, quite independently of Paul's 
influence and antecedently to his conversion, understood 
and sympathised with the humanistic tendency of Christ’s 
teaching? And if we inquire ‘nto the source of this 
Palestinian universalism, we cannot point to any more 
likely origin than the preaching of the eleven. Why 
should it be assumed that the original apostles were the 
narrow Judaistic bigots it suits the exigencies of the 
Tiibingen theory to make them? It is only by straining 
and special pleading that the New Testament literature 
can be made to yield evidence in favour of such an 
assumption? The presumption is all the other way. 
It was not in vain, surely, that Peter and John and 
their companions had been with Jesus for years! If 
the story of the Acts can be trusted at all, they had 
imbibed during that time somewhat of the moral courage 


1 Vide Baur’s work, Paulus der Apostel Jesu Christi, and Bd. I. of his 
Geschichte der Christlichen Kirche. 

2 Vide Weizsicker, Das Apostolische Zeitalter, p. 437 (references are to 
the first edition). 

8 The passage chiefly relied on for this purpose is Gal, ii. 11-21, which 
tells of a collision between Paul and Peter at Antioch in reference to the 
behaviour of the latter towards Gentile converts. 


416 APOLOGETICS, 


of their Master! Why should we be incredulous an 
to their attaining also to some insight into and apprecia- 
tion of His world-wide sympathies? In both respects 
they might come short of Paul; there is reason to believe 
they did. From all that we can learn their universalism 
was of a very mild type, compared with the passionate 
devotion of the apostle of the Gentiles to a gospel for all. 
mankind on equal terms, But it was sufficient at least ta 
help them to remember sayings of the Master of univer. 
salistic scope, and make them not disinclined to repeat — 
these when communicating their reminiscences to the infant 
Church. Towards such sayings most of their audience 
might be like the wayside hearers of Christ’s parable; but 
there were some, witness Stephen and Barnabas, who sup- 
plied the good ground needful for bringing forth a univer. 
salism of a more pronounced type than that even of the 
preachers, 

The foregoing remarks are not, of course, to be taken 
as disparagement of Paul, but as a protest against a 
widespread tendency to make him the real author of 
Christianity? While resolutely refusing him this honour, 
however, we must earnestly acknowledge his very great 
importance as the interpreter and eloquent preacher of what 
we believe to be the true mind of Jesus concerning the 
destination of the gospel. One cannot too much admire 
the providence of God which raised him up to be the 
apostle of Gentile Christianity, and the grace of God which 
prepared him for discharging the duties of that high voca- 
tion with the greatest possible efficiency. He was, as we 
know from his own letters, beforehand a most unlikely 
instrument. A Pharisee of the Pharisees, a pupil of the 
Rabbis, an intense fanatical zealot for the Jewish law and 
traditions—how improbable that such a man would ever 
become a convert, not to speak of an enthusiastic preacher, 
of a religion which was in spirit and genius anti-pharisaic, 
anti-rabbinical, anti-legal! Likelier far that he will become 

* Acts iv. 18, * So, for example, Pfleiderer in Urchristenthum. 


: 
a 
4 


ao 


PAUL. 417 


the champion of the old religion of his fathers, the forlorn 
hope of Judaism, the Maccabeeus of a new time waging an 
uncompromising life-long war against all defections from 
the national faith and customs. That, indeed, was the 
career he chose for himself, and had actually entered on. 
But God’s plan for his life was different, and so Saul, the 
zealot for Jewish law and persecutor of Christians, became 
a preacher of the faith he once destroyed. 

It was a great spiritual transformation, and one naturally 
asks how it came about. By what means was this Pharisaic 
zealot and bitter opponent of Christianity changed into a 
Christian, and such a Christian ; not merely believing that 
Jesus was the Christ, but espousing with all the enthusiasm 
of a passionate temperament, and all the logical consistency 
of a powerful intellect, the great idea of a gospel for the 
world; treating the law, once everything to him, as nothing, 
and insisting that in Christ is no distinction of Jew and 
Gentile, but only a new humanity for which differences of 
race have no longer any meaning? This is one of the 
hard problems for those who undertake to give a purely 
naturalistic account of the origins of Christianity. The 
attempts at solution which they have offered are based on 
the familiar axiom: extremes meet. It is not at all 
surprising, we are told, that a man who has gone to one 
extreme should eventually, and it may be suddenly, swing 
round to the other extreme; nor need we wonder if in 
connection with the excitement accompanying a very 
intense experience, such a man should see visions and hear 
voices corresponding to the nature of the change in con- 
viction he is undergoing. | 

All attempts at explaining Paul’s conversion without 


1 Baur contents himself with asserting in general terms the possibility of 
the great moral revolution coming about in a natural way. Vide Der Apostel 
Paulus, p. 86. Renan characteristically finds the problem quite simple, and 
explains the conversion of Paul on the same offhand jaunty method we 
have seen him apply to the resurrection of Jesus, Vide Les Apétres, p. 182. 
The most elaborate attempt at a naturalistic explanation of the event is that 
of Holsten in Zum Evangelium des Petrus und des Paulus, 


2.D 


418 APOLOGETICS. 


recognising the hand of God in it must be futile. In the 
last resort we are obliged to fall back on the apostle’s own 
devout language and say, It pleased God to reveal His Son 
in him! But it is not necessary to magnify the miracle 
of grace so as to make it appear a magical triumph over a 
psychological impossibility. In other words, we must not 
assume that it was in the highest degree improbable that 
one such as Paul had been before his conversion should 
become such as we know him to have been after his con- 
version; that so intense a Pharisee and legalist should ever 
become so eager an advocate of a religion utterly opposed 
to Pharisaism and legalism. On the surface the improb- 
ability of such a change appears, as already indicated, very 
great. But looking below the surface one can see that the 
catastrophe was not so sudden or unprepared as it seems. 
The adage, extremes meet, does not explain everything, but 


it counts for something. The very intensity of Paul’s — 


Pharisaism tended to make him a Christian. With a little 
moral earnestness a man might remain a Pharisee all his 
days, but with a great consuming earnestness, a passion for 
righteousness, one is likely to go through to the other side 


of Pharisaism, into what Carlyle, speaking of Luther, called — 


the more credible hypothesis of salvation by free grace. 
That the great change in Paul’s religious attitude was 

not without preparation, and in particular that his experi- 

ences as a Pharisee contributed to bring it about, is not a 


matter of mere conjecture. His own letters contain some ~ 


very significant autobiographical hints bearing on the point. 


Thus he tells us that while he was earnestly endeavouring — 
to fulfil the requirements of the law, his attention was — 


arrested at a certain stage by the tenth commandment of — 


the Decalogue: Thou shalt not covet, and that through this 
prohibition, directed against inward disposition, as distinct 


from outward act, he attained to a new sense of moral | 


shortcoming” The fact is in various ways very instructive. — 


It shows for one thing that even then Saul of Tarsus was ~ 


2 Gal. i. 15. ® Rom. vii. 7. 


i 


— 


Se OE TC es 


sr tae Nala 


PAUL, 419 


no vulgar Pharisee, but a man of quite exceptional moral 
sensitiveness. The votaries of a religion of ostentation, 
who did all their works to be seen of men, did not trouble 
themselves about sins of thought and feeling, so long as all 
was seemly and fair without. Christ’s indictment of His 
Pharisaic contemporaries turned largely on this very feature 
of their character. “Ye make clean,” said He, “ the out- 
side of the cup.” Their righteousness, in His view, was 
an affair of acting, hypocrisy. That could never have been 
said of Saul. He began, indeed, at the outside, and was 
careful to make all right there. But his oversight of evil 
within was due not to obtuseness of conscience, but chiefly 
to preoccupation. How tender and true his moral senti- 
ments were appeared from the serious view he took of 
the evil of selfish desires when he became aware of their 
presence in his heart. 

As Saul differed from the ordinary Pharisee by his 
capacity of being distressed on account of sin within, so 
the actual distress evoked by the precept against coveting 
had much to do with his final abandonment of Pharisaism. 
When through that precept he became aware that there 
was a whole world of sin within of which he had hitherto 
remained unconscious, the beginning of the end had come. 
The suspicion could not but arise that righteousness on the 
method of legalism was impossible. That it did arise we 
know from another autobiographical hint in Paul’s letters: 
“When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” ! 
“TI died,” that is, hope died; hope of salvation on the 
Pharisaic programme of self-righteousness. This was not 
Christianity, it was only despair of Pharisaism; but as 
such it was a decisive step onwards towards the new 
standing ground. It was the everlasting no of incipient 
unbelief in self-righteousness preparing for the everlasting 
yes of faith in salvation by grace. It is not to be supposed 
that the everlasting no was pronounced at once, frankly 
and unreluctantly. Pharisaism dies hard, Religious pride 

1 Rom. vii. 9. 


420 APOLOGETICS, 


is not easily broken; only in noble truthful natures can it 
be broken at all. How sorely against the grain of human 
nature it goes to renounce the boast of virtue, and to acknow- 
ledge that all one’s painful, protracted, laborious efforts to 
build up character, and quite successfully so far as reputa- 
tion is concerned, have been vain! The wild colt will for 
a time “kick against the pricks” before he is fairly broken 
in. The happy phrase put into Christ’s mouth by the 
historian of the Acts, in the third recital of the story of 
Saul’s conversion,’ hits off exactly the situation. There are 
rising convictions destined to conquer, but meantime stub- 
bornly resisted. The Pharisaic fanatic was kicking against 
the pricks at the very time he was persecuting the followers 
of Jesus; for a man is never so violent against an opinion 
as when he is half-convinced it is true, and yet is unwilling 
to receive it. And in passing it may be remarked that 
Saul’s exceeding madness against Christians, taken in con- 
nection with his waning faith in Pharisaism, implies that 
Christianity appeared to him during the persecuting period 
as the rival of legal righteousness, Christianity, as he 
viewed it in these days, must have been something more 
than a variety of Judaism having for its distinctive tenet 
the belief that Jesus was the Christ, and in all other 
respects conforming to existing Jewish opinion and practice. 
Had it been no more than this it would have been difficult 
to understand what there could be in the Christian com- 
munity to provoke such bitter hostility in Paul’s mind. 
The fact that he persecuted the Church is the best proof 
that in the bosom of that society a new religion had 
appeared destined to alter much, A sure instinct told the 
ardent young Pharisee that there was something that boded 
danger to the religion of the law, latent possibly as yet, 
and only partially comprehended by the adherents of the 
new sect, but certain to become operative more and more 
in such a way as to show that the martyr Stephen had 
truly divined the genius of the nascent faith. But for this 
2 Acts xxvi. 14. 


: 


PAUL. 421 


he would have let the Christians alone. That they believed 


~a crucified man to be the Christ would not have provoked 


his ire. At most he would have regarded their belief 
simply as an absurd opinion. It was the spirit of the new 
religion, its anti-legal undercurrent, which made it for him 
at once a source of fascination and an object of fear and 
hatred. 

When a crisis occurs in a life of great moral intensity 
the issues involved are wont to be very radical. That Saul 
of Tarsus, even with his new insight into sin and _ his 
despair of attaining unto righteousness, should become a 
Christian was not a matter of course; but that in case he 
became a Christain his Christianity would be very thorough- 
going might be taken for granted. It is not difficult to 
determine what the leading characteristics of his altered 
religious attitude would be. He would see clearly that the 
seat of true righteousness was in the heart, and not in the 
outward act. There would be a great change in his way of 
regarding the Jewish law. The veneration for it he had 
learned in his father’s house, and in the Rabbinical schools, 
would give place to a feeling that might easily be mistaken 
for contempt. The convert would say to himself: Whatever 
that law is good for, and that it serves some good end I 
must believe, for God is its author, it is not that way a 
man can reach righteousness and salvation. Out of some 
such feeling grew the doctrine concerning the law formu- 
lated in later years, that its real God-appointed function 
was to provoke into activity the sinful principle in human 
nature, so to give the knowledge of sin and prepare the 
sinner for receiving God’s grace in Jesus Christ. Along 
with this contempt for the law as a way to righteousness 
would go loss of respect for Jewish prerogative. Jewish 
pride would pass away with that on which it fed. If by all 
our efforts to keep the law we cannot commend ourselves 
to God, why should we think that Jews are more to God 
than Gentiles? That we have a God-given law is a poor 
ground of boasting; the grand fact about us all, Jew and 


422 APOLOGETICS, 


Gentile alike, is that we are all sinners in God's sight. 
Here was Pauline universalism in germ. Once more, the 
new religious attitude would involve an altered view of 
man’s relation to God. According to the old view, the 
relation was a purely legal one: God made demands with 
which men were bound under heavy penalties to comply. 
But with the great crisis would come insight into the 
blessed truth that God’s attitude towards men is not that 
of One who simply makes demands, but before all things 
that of One who gives. The idea of divine exaction would 
retire into the- background, and the idea of divine grace 
would come to the front. It was not a novel idea. It was 
as old as the prophets, as old one may say as Moses, though 
the long dreary night of legalism had caused it to be almost 
wholly forgotten. It only needed to be rediscovered, and 
Saul in the time of his spiritual tribulation, when the 
words, “Thou shalt not covet,” were ringing in his ears, 
was in a state of mind favourable for making the discovery. 
God’s grace was his only chance of salvation, his only 
refuge from despair. How sweet to one in such a forlorn 
condition Jeremiah’s oracle of the new covenant with the 
law written on the heart, or the new name for God, “Father,” 
recently coined by Jesus and used by Him to proclaim a 
gospel of divine mercy towards even “ publicans and 
sinners”! We need not doubt that both these aids to the 
new yet most ancient way of thinking concerning God were 
available to Saul in his time of need. Bunyan in his hour 
of darkness searched the whole Scriptures in quest of texts 
that might encourage even him to hope in God’s mercy. 
Why should Saul in despair of salvation by self-righteous- 
ness not be equally on the alert to discover texts like: 
“There is forgiveness with Thee,” and “I will put my law 
in their inward parts”? And it is surely not a violent 
supposition that some stray samples of the new Christian 
dialect reached the ears of this remarkable pupil of the 
Rabbis, and that some such words as those in which Jesus 
thanked His Father that the things of the kingdom were 


ws ha ile oy Som 


PAUL. 423 


revealed to babes, while hid from the wise and understand- 
ing, brought comfort to his heart in the time of his distress ! 

The forementioned elements of the Christian conscious- 
ness of Paul are all fair deductions from what we know 
from himself concerning his state of mind antecedent to his 
conversion. They probably all entered into his new reli- 
gious attitude from the day he became a Christian, though 
all their implications might not be immediately apparent to 
his view. If the general characteristics of that attitude 
have been correctly determined, it will be seen that Paul’s 
Christianity was essentially the same as that of Christ. 
For him, as for the Great Master, it was the religion of 
the spirit as opposed to ritualism, the religion of faith as 
opposed to legalism, the religion of grace as opposed to 
self-righteousness, and the religion of humanity as opposed 
to Jewish exclusiveness. But Paul’s Christianity was not 
merely a religion like that of Christ: it was a religion of 
which Christ was the central object. The most vital and 
specific article of his creed was the doctrine of Christ's 
atoning death and of justification through faith therein. 
It does not come within the scope of an apologetic treatise 
to enter into a detailed explanation or defence of that 
doctrine. Its general import, which is all that here con- 
cerns us, is sufficiently clear. Paul, the Christian, believed 
in a righteousness of God freely given to all who believed 
in Jesus as crucified for their salvation. He put his con- 
ception in compact form when he spoke of the sinless Jesus 
as made sin for us “that we might be made the righteous- 
ness of God in Him.”! This righteousness of God in 
Pauline dialect is a synonym for pardon. It does not 
cover the whole ground of a sinner’s spiritual need. What 
of the heart righteousness which the quondam Pharisee had 
discovered to be necessary? A very important part of the 
apologetic side of Paul's system of thought, as expounded 
in his four great Epistles, is that which has for its object to 
show that the ethical interest, or personal holiness, is not 

12 Cor. v. 21, 


424 . APOLOGETICS. 


compromised by his doctrine of justification. That end is 
accomplished by what has been not inaptly called his 
“faith-mysticism,” that is to say, his conception of believers 
in a Christ who died for them, as also dying with Him and 
rising to a new life. The latter aspect is not less essential 
to Paul’s theory than the former. 

There are no autobiographical hints in Paul’s letters as 
to the genesis of his doctrine of justification by faith in 
Christ’s atoning death, such as those which help us to 
understand his loss of faith in justification by law. We 
are left to our own conjectures. Several possible sources 
of the great thought suggest themselves. Doubtless the 
faith of the first disciples that Jesus was the Christ though 
crucified would have its own influence. Then the Pharisee’s 
despair of self-achieved righteousness would powerfully 
contribute to prepare his mind for the reception of the 
new idea. For though he had lost confidence in his own 
righteousness, he did not lose the craving for righteousness, 
or the urgent sense of its indispensableness, He felt all 
along that righteousness must be forthcoming somehow. 
From that feeling to faith in an objective “imputed ” 
righteousness of God was indeed a long step, though it 
looked in that direction. It has been thought that the 
theology of the Jewish schools gave the anxious inquirer 
the hint out of which his doctrine of justification was 
developed. The Jews believed that the surplus merits of 
the fathers might be imputed to less holy men, and that 
the sufferings of the righteous could atone for the sins of 
the unrighteous. They did not, strange to say, apply the 
theory to the Messiah, in whose case one would expect it 
to be best exemplified. But the theory, once broached, 
might easily be extended in that direction. A suffering 
Christ, such as Christians believed in, was in harmony with 
Hebrew prophecy, if not with Rabbinical traditions. He, 
like others, might suffer unjustly, and His sufferings might 
atone for the sins of His people. One does not care to 
think of the great apostle as indebted to the Rabbis for any 


2 an) 


m. 
A" 


PAUL. 425 


parts of his system, and yet it is not inconceivable that he 
may have “spoiled the Egyptians,” and borrowed from his 
former masters ideas capable of being made serviceable toa 
faith which was to be the destruction of Rabbinism.’ 

With more confidence we may suppose that the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus, boldly proclaimed by the first believers, and 
put beyond doubt for himself by the appearance of Jesus 
to him on the way to Damascus, powerfully helped Paul to 
grasp the thought of Christ’s death as an atonement for sin 
and a source of righteousness. Twenty years after his con- 
version he wrote in one of his letters that Christ “was 
raised again for our justification.” 2 From the day that he 
believed that Jesus rose from the dead he probably con- 
ceived of Him as being raised for His own justification in 
the first place. That is to say, for the new convert the 
resurrection of Jesus was conclusive proof that Jesus had 
not suffered for His own offences. The question inevitably 
arose, for whose then? for it was an axiom for Paul, as for 
the Jews in general, that death was the penalty of sin. The 
answer of faith, as formulated by the apostle in after years, 
was, He suffered for our offences, the Sinless One had been 
made sin for us to the effect of enduring sin’s appointed 
penalty. This thought, like those previously enumerated, 
probably formed an element in Paul’s Christian conscious- 
ness from the first, though no clear statement of it is to be 
found in his mission discourses reported in Acts or in his 
earliest Epistles.$ 


1 Vide on this subject Pfleiderer’s Urchristenthum, pp. 154-171, and for 
the views of the Jewish schools Weber’s System der Altsynagogalen Palédstin- 
ischen Theologie. That Paul’s modes of reasoning betray the influence of 
early Rabbinical training is now pretty generally admitted. His arguments 
based on the use of the singular ‘‘seed”’ (Gal. iii. 16), the veil on the face of 
Moses (2 Cor, iii. 13), and the allegory of Hagar and Ishmael (Gal. iv. 24), 
may be referred to as instances. These things, in which Paul paid tribute 
to his age, only serve by contrast to enhance our sense of his insight into 
the great principles of Christianity. In this region what strikes one is not 
the resemblance but. the contrast to Rabbinism, 

2 Rom. iv. 25. 

7On Paul’s earlier mode of presenting Christianity, as exhibited in his 


426 APOLOGETICS. 


On the whole, it may be said that the main source of 
Paul’s theology was his experience. It was a theoretical 
solution of the problem of his own individual conscience, 
How shall a man be just before God? It may wear a 
technical aspect, due to the fact that it was formulated in 
connection with a great controversy concerning the meaning 
of the law and the destination of the gospel. But it is not 
scholastic in spirit, but thrills throughout with the fervour 
of intense religious emotion. To this cause it is due that 
Paul’s attention is concentrated on two events in Christ’s 
earthly history: His death and His resurrection, These 
were the events which met his most urgent spiritual 
necessities. This concentration is the secret of his lasting 
power. It enabled him to grasp the religious significance 
of the events referred to with a clearness of insight, and to 
express it with a vividness, which have given his state- 
ments, apart from the deference paid to them as inspired, a 
permanent hold on the mind of Christendom. We can 
hardly think of the general religious truth that we are 
saved by grace, apart from Paul’s special theological formu- 
lation of it in his doctrine of justification. 

But concentration brings limitations as well as power. 
Limitation is, indeed, a condition of power. Prophets pro- 
phesy in part, and they tell upon their time because they 
do so. Paul’s prophetic intensity and onesidedness enabled 
him to assert the independence and universality of Chris- 
tianity with an emphasis which put the matter for ever 
beyond controversy. It therefore does no dishonour to 
him to take in earnest his own words concerning the 
limited nature of all prophecy, and to say that he has not 
in his Epistles exhausted the significance of the earthly 
history of Jesus. He has not éven presented in all its 
aspects the meaning of Christ’s death. He has set forth 
with power the mystic solidarity of believers with a 
crucified and risen Saviour, but he has not taught with 


discourses reported in Acts and 1 and 2 Thessalonians, vide Sabatier, The 
Apostle Paul, Book IL 


a 


PAUL, 427 


breadth and emphasis the precious doctrine of Christ’s 
temptations and priestly sympathy. For that we must go to 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. He has stated in the avail- 
able categories of thought the theological importance. of 
Christ’s death, but he has not exhibited its ethical import 
as the result of the sufferer’s fidelity to righteousness and 
to His Messianic vocation, which is the foundation of the 
theological superstructure. To learn this first and funda- 
mental lesson we must go to the Gospels, where Christ’s 
public ministry, as it unfolds itself, is seen to be an inces- 
sant and deadly conflict with a counterfeit righteousness 
of which Paul himself was first the dupe and then the 
victim. And much more of great value to the Christian 
faith and life is to be learned from the same source, which 
is not to be got out of Paul. There we find the historical 
vouchers for the fierceness of the temptations and the depth 
of the sympathy whereof the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews delights to discourse. There we see that redeem- 
ing gracious love to the sinful in daily exercise, which for 
Paul was God-commended by the supreme instance of the 
cross,—a love all the more impressive that it was shown 
toward objects neglected by the reputedly good, as past all 
hope of salvation. There the nature of true goodness is 
revealed by contrast with a spurious type, arrogant in its 
pretensions and intolerant of rivals. There the doctrine of 
God as the Father in heaven, and of man even at the worst 
as His son, is asserted with a breadth, simplicity, and 
emphasis unique in the history of religious literature. 
There we become acquainted with another mode of present- 
ing for man’s acceptance the summum bonum, Christ’s own 
chosen way, viz. as a kingdom of God. Paul’s point of 
view is individual. Christ’s is social. The righteousness 
of God is a boon offered to faith as the solution of the 
problem of the individual conscience. The kingdom of God 
is a gift of divine love to men conceived of as related to 
God as sons and to each other as brethren, a gift which 
cannot be enjoyed except in connection with a social 


428 APOLOGETICS, 


organism. The two aspects of the swmmum bonum are not 
incompatible or without important points of contact. The 
idea of social solidarity in reality underlies Paul’s concep- 
tion of the highest good. Believers are in mystic unity 
with Christ ; they die, rise, and ascend to heaven with Him. 
They are a joint-stock company for good and evil, first in 
their common relation to the Head, and inferentially in 
relation to one another. Still what is present to the mind 
of one who regards the highest good under the Pauline 
aspect is the question, How am I as an individual man to 
become just before God? It is a vital question, but it 
needs supplementing by the larger one, How am I to get 
into right relations with the whole moral world ; with God 
and with my fellowmen? Christ’s answer to the latter 
question may be found alternatively in His doctrine of God 
and man, or in His doctrine concerning Himself. Think 
of God as your gracious Father, and of all men, even the 
most degraded, as His sons, and let your life be dominated 
by this great ruling thought. Regard me as at once Son of 
God and Son of man, and in fellowship with me enter into 
possession of the same divine dignity, and the exercise of 
the same human sympathies. It is the business of theology 
to determine the affinities between the Galilean and the 
Pauline Gospels, but it is the privilege of religious faith to 
enter into life by the door which Jesus has opened without 
stopping to try whether Paul’s key fits the lock. The 
words of Jesus are “words of eternal life,” and no truth 
not spoken by Him can be essential to salvation, however 
helpful for upbuilding in faith. His teaching contains in 
the smallest measure a local and temporary element. Paul 
and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, as to the form 
of their thought and their modes of reasoning, spoke largely 
to the men of their own generation, having it for their task 
to reveal and commend the spirit of the new Christian era 
to minds wedded to the past. Jesus addressed Himself to 
humanity, and many of His sayings, even in their form, are as 
modern as if they had been uttered in the present century. 


> 


PAUL. 429 


These observations may serve as a corrective to a tend- 
ency that has been more or less operative, especially in 
the Protestant section of the Church, to discover the gospel 
almost exclusively in Paul’s writings, and to neglect the 
Gospels as of little doctrinal value. In avoiding one ex- 
treme, however, we must beware of going to another, that 
of neglecting Paul in our new love for the Gospels. This 
tendency is not without its representatives, and it has found 
a persuasive mouthpiece in Renan. In his work on St. 
Paul this author writes: “After being for three hundred 
years the Christian doctor par excellence, thanks to Protest- 
ant orthodoxy, Paul in our day is on the point of finishing 
his reign. Jesus, on the contrary, is more living than ever. 
It is no more the Epistle to the Romans that is the réswme 
of Christianity. It is the Sermon onthe Mount. The true 
Christianity which will remain eternally, comes from the 
Gospels, not from the Epistles of Paul.”? This is a super- 
ficial hasty verdict. A truer judgment will recognise that 
the Christianity of Paul is essentially the same as that of 
Jesus. Nor will a candid mind reckon it an unpardonable 
sin that Paul’s thoughts on the nature of the Christian 
religion were cast in a controversial mould. That the 
apostle was a controversialist is a fact, but it was his mis- 
fortune, not his fault. The great question regarding the 
relation of Christianity to Judaism could not fail to arise 
sooner or later. Conflict on this point,on which the whole 
future of Christianity turned, was inevitable, and some one 
must render the inestimable service to humanity of fighting 
for the right in the momentous quarrel. Paul was the man 
selected by Providence to perform this task, and instead of 
blaming him for his destiny, let us rather be thankful that 
he discerned and chose the right side, and fought for it with 
incomparable skill and with heroic determination, as well 
as with triumphant success. ; 

1 st. Paul, pp. 569, 570, 


430 APOLOGETICS. 


CHAPTER VII. 
PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 


LITERATURE. — Neander, History of the Planting and 
Training of the Christian Church; Baur, Die Geschichte 
der Christlichen Kirche, Band I., and Paulus der Avpostel ; 
Albrecht Ritschl, Entstehung der Alt-Katholischen Kirche 
(2te Aufl. 1857); Hausrath, Meutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte 
(translated) ; Reuss, Geschichte der heiligen Schriften N.Ts, 5te 
Aufl. 1874; Keim, Aus dem Urchristenthum, 1878 ; Holsten, 
Das Hvangelium des Paulus, 1880; Bleek, Introduction to the 
New Testament (translation); B. Weiss, Introduction to the 
New Testament (translation, 1887); Weizsicker, Das Apos- 
tolische Zeitalter, 2te Aufl. 1891; Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum. 


Christianity, as apprehended by Paul, was, we have seen, 
a universal religion. His mode of thought, when engaged 
in theological discussion, might be distinctively Jewish, 


and his method of using Scripture in proof of his positions - 


might occasionally betray the influence of early training in 
the Rabbinical schools, but in all his Epistles he represented 
Christianity as a religion to be made known unto all the 
nations unto obedience of faith. From these same Epistles, 
especially from those written to the Galatian and Corinthian 
Churches, it is evident that his view did not command 
unanimous assent, but was bitterly opposed by a section of 
the Christian community. That diversity of opinion as to 
the relation of Christianity to Judaism prevailed in the 
early Church appears likewise from the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. The author of that Epistle is evidently in sym- 
pathy with Paul, but he writes to a body of Christians, 
apparently Hebrews in race, who had little insight into the 
genius of Christianity and little inclination to regard it, as 
he did, as the absolute religion entitled to supersede the 
old Jewish covenant and Levitical worship. 

Such divergencies of view within the bosom of the 


>) aa 


PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 431 


Church naturally raise the wider question, Through what 
phases did Christianity pass in the formative period of its 
history, and in what relation did these stand to Christ and 
to Paul: the great Master and His greatest disciple ? On 
this question great difference of opinion prevails among 
theologians. The whole subject of primitive Christianity, 
as it was taught by Jesus, and as it manifested itself in 
the period antecedent to the formation of the old Catholic 
Church, is the battle-ground of contending parties, and the 
whole truth as to the matters in debate is by no means 
on either side of the controversy, whether orthodox or 
heterodox. 

Four distinct theories concerning the tendencies at work 
in early Christianity have found advocates among modern 
critics. 

1. The first of these theories is that of Dr. Ferdinand 
Christian Baur. According to Baur, Christ not less than 
Paul was universalistic in spirit, He taught a religion 
purely ethical in its nature, equally adapted for all climes, 
and destined in His intention to become the religion of 
humanity. But His disciples failed to apprehend the drift 
of His teaching, so that, after His death, among all the 
men bearing the title of an apostle, Paul was the only one 
who entered with intelligence and enthusiasm into the 
spirit of the Master. Hence arose, in course of time, a 
great controversy as to the relation between Christianity 
and Judaism, in which Paul was on one side, and all the 
eleven original apostles on the other; Paul contending for 
the right of Christianity to be an independent religion, and 
to go on its world-conquering career untrammelled by the 
uncongenial restrictions of Jewish law and custom ; the 
eleven striving to keep the new religion in a state of 
pupilage to the old. The history of Christianity from the 


) For the sake of definiteness in statement, I connect these theories with 
as many individual names. It will be understood that each name repre- 
sents more or less a school. For a sufficiently full account of the critical 
literature bearing on the subject, vide Weiss, Introduction to the New 
Testament, Introduction. © 


432 APOLOGETICS. 


apostolic age to the rise of the old Catholic Church in the 
middle of the second century was the history of this con- 
troversy in its various stages of (1) unmitigated antagonism 
between the two opposed tendencies; (2) incipient and 
progressive reconciliation ; (3) consummated reconciliation 
and completed union and unity. The books of the New 
Testament all relate to one or other of these stages, and 
their dates may be approximately fixed by the tendencies 
they respectively represent. A book which belongs to the 
first stage, and advocates either pure Paulinism or a purely 
Judaistic view of Christianity, is therefore early and 
apostolic; on the other hand, a book which belongs to the 
final stage, and presents a view of Christianity rising entirely 
above early antagonisms, must be of late date, and cannot 
have had an apostle for its author. 

2. The most thoroughgoing opponent of the Tiibingen 
theory is Dr. Bernhard Weiss. This author, whose con- 
tributions to New Testament criticism possess much value, 
is animated by an undue desire to negative Baur’s con- 
clusions all along the line. On this account a large 
deduction must be made from the weight to be attached to 
his statements on the questions at issue. It is not the 
fact that the Tiibingen school is always wrong, and it is a 
very questionable service to the Christian faith that is 
rendered by an apologetic going on that assumption. 
Briefly put, the view of Weiss is that neither in the case 
of Jesus nor in the case of Paul was Christianity, as 
originally conceived, universalistic. The aim of Jesus was 
simply to establish a theocratic national kingdom in Israel. 
He never dreamt of calling in question the perpetual 
obligation of the Mosaic law; and the idea of making dis- 
ciples among the Gentiles arose in His mind only at a late 
period in His career, when He began to despair of winning 
His countrymen to righteousness. Somewhat similar, 
according to this author, was the experience of Paul. His 
universalism was not the immediate outcome of the spiritual 
crisis which issued in his conversion ; it was an afterthought 


— ee ae 
a 


So 


PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 433 


suggested by outward events. He does, indeed, in his 
Epistle to the Galatians, connect his conversion with the 
divine intention to make him an apostle to the Gentiles, 
but we are not to suppose that this was clear to him from 
the beginning. He is simply reading the teleology of his 
conversion in the light of long subsequent history. What 
really first opened his mind to the great thought of a 
vocation to apostleship in the Gentile world was his experi- 
ence of Jewish unbelief and Gentile receptivity on his 
mission tour through the cities of Asia Minor. That 
mission was not, in the intention of the Church at Antioch 
in Syria, a mission to the heathen, but only to the Jewish 
Diaspora, but it suggested the idea of a heathen mission to 
the susceptible mind of Paul. The results revealed to him 
a divine purpose to reject Israel and to call the Gentiles in 
their room, 

On this view there were no materials out of which a 
great controversy concerning the nature of Christianity 
could arise. There were not two ways of thinking on the 
subject. The contrast between Paulinism and the Judaistic 
Christianity of the eleven disappears. A universalism of 
conviction had no existence: all were Judaists to begin 
with, and the only universalism known to the Apostolic 
Church was of an opportunist character, and such as there 
was did not distinguish Paul from the original apostles, for 
all alike bowed to events and acknowledged that God had 
granted to the Gentiles eternal life. 

3. More in sympathy with the views of Baur are those 
of Weizsicker. He believes that the religious spirit both 
of Jesus and of Paul was pronouncedly universalistic, Far 
from doubting the claim of Jesus to this attribute, he is of 
opinion that His universalism was of a more decided 
character than even that of Paul. He differs from Baur 
chiefly in thinking that there was a universalistic tendency 
at work in the Palestine or Hebrew Church entirely inde- 
pendent of Paul; specifying as instances Stephen, Barnabas, 

1 Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 154, 164, 
2E 


434 APOLOGETICS, 


and Apollos. The original apostles he conceives to have 
sympathised with this tendency to a certain extent, though 
coming far short of the Gentile apostle in zeal for the great 
cause of a Christianity emancipated from the dominion of 
Jewish legalism! This view, in itself intrinsically probable, 
has an important bearing on the history of early Christianity. 
It reduces the cleavage in the Church to less formidable 
dimensions. It leaves room still for controversy arising 
out of diversity of view as to the nature and destination 
of the Christian faith, but the war of conflicting opinion 
could not, on Weizsicker’s conception of the state of parties, 
be the tragic affair that it was bound to be according to 
the Tiibingen scheme. For, in the first place, by his 
account all the leading men were practically on one side; 
whereas, according to Dr. Baur, the state of the case was 
Paul single-handed versus the pillars of the Church. Then, 
in the second place, the cleavage in the Church, on the 
Weizsacker theory, was not one of race. Paul had warm 
friends and supporters, not only among Gentile converts, 
but also among Christians of Hebrew extraction. On these 
terms a controversy of an epoch-making character, and 
forming the great event of early Church history, could not 
possibly arise. 

4, Pfleiderer, while believing that the teaching of Jesus 
contained the germs of universalism,? reserves for Paul the 
praise of being the first to proclaim with clear insight and 
impassioned emphasis the great doctrine of a gospel of 
grace for the world, and for all on equal terms, involving 
as a corollary the abrogation of the Jewish ceremonial Jaw 
both for Jewish and for Gentile believers. The leading | 
apostles, especially Peter, he conceives as sympathising to 


* Weizsicker, Das Apostolische Zeitalter, p. 487. 

? Among the historically reliable data going to prove that Jesus was 
animated by a ‘‘reforming free spirit,” Pfleiderer includes the sayings 
concerning the new wine and old skins, the relativity of the Sabbath law 
(the Sabbath made for man), the worthlessness of the ceremonial law, and 
the destroying of the Temple and building of a spiritual temple. — 
Urchristenthum, p. 493. 


a 


PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 435 


a certain extent with Paul’s position, but lacking a distinct 
understanding and firm grasp of the principles at stake, 
and on that account disqualified for rendering Paul effective 
service against his Judaistic opponents, and even exposed 
to the risk of being themselves mistaken for antagonists. 
In such circumstances misunderstanding, alienation, and 
controversy might easily arise. But in Pfleiderer’s view 
the great fact of primitive Christianity was by no means 
the conflict between Paulinism and Judaism, but rather 
the development which Paulinism itself underwent. For 
this writer Paulinism is Christianity. It is the one thing 
we surely know in connection with the beginnings of the 
Christian religion, an island of firm historical ground 
surrounded by a sea of uncertainty. Its influence can 
be traced everywhere in the New Testament, in Gospels 
and in Epistles, and the movement of thought to which it 
gave rise is the one phenomenon of first-rate importance 
with which the student of Church history has to deal down to 
the middle of the second century. But what is Paulinism ? 
It is, according to Pfleiderer, a complex system of ideas 
derived from different sources, lacking inner harmony, and 
liable therefore to part company in the course of time. 
The account he gives of the theological system of Paul is 
analogous to that given by Baur of the teaching of Jesus. 
In both cases two things are tied together, which, if nob 
absolutely contradictory, are at least heterogeneous, and 
therefore sure to fall asunder in the course of development. 
In the case of Jesus, according to Baur, they were: a 
universalist religious spirit and a nationalistic form, the 
Jewish Messianic idea. In the case of Paul, according to 
Pfieiderer, they were two sets of ideas, the one borrowed 
from the theology of the Pharisaic schools, the other from 
Hellenistic philosophy, as represented by the Book of 
Wisdom. What he got from the former source we already 
know: it was mainly his doctrine of imputed righteous- 
ness? What he got from the latter source it is not so easy 
4 Vide p. 425, 


436 APOLOGETICS. 


to make out; for at this point the theory of our author 
wears the aspect of an airy speculation with a very slender 
basis of fact. But so far as one can gather, the Hellenistic 
influence is traceable in Paul’s ideas of the future life, in 
his anthropology, and, above all, in his doctoine of imparted 
righteousness. Paul, we know, was not content that the 
believer should have God’s righteousness imputed to him 
on the ground of Christ’s atoning death. He held it 
indispensable that the believer should be really personally 
righteous, and this he was persuaded all believers could 
become through mystic fellowship with Christ crucified 
and risen. In neither part of this composite doctrine of 
righteousness, according to Pfleiderer, was the apostle 
original. He derived the one half from the school of 
Gamaliel, the other from the school of Philo, His theory 
of imputed righteousness was, we are informed, “ Christian- 
ised Pharisaism,” and his theory of real righteousness 
“Christianised Hellenism.”’ And what, we naturally ask, 
was the subsequent fortune of these two theories? Not 
exactly to fall asunder into antagonism, and become the 
watchwords of fiercely contending parties. Rather this: 
the theory of imputed righteousness was too abstruse, 
peculiar, and Jewish to be understood by Gentile Chris- 
tians ; therefore it was to a large extent ignored, and only 
the Hellenistic side of Pauline theology took root and grew 
with a vigorous and lasting vitality in the great Christian 
community of which Paul was the founder. So arose a 
new type of thought, Pauline in its origin, holding firmly 
the great principle of Christian universalism, but dis- 
regarding Paul’s controversial theology and rising above the 
antitheses of original Paulinism. This new catholic theo- 
logy is, we are told, not to be regarded either as an external 
reconciliation of Paulifiism and Judaistic Christianity, nor 
as a corruption of Paulinism through heathenish super- 
ficiality and Greek world - wisdom, but rather as the 
legitimate development of Hellenism Christianised by 
1 Urchristenthum, p. 175. 


PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 437 


Paul, and, as such, distinct both from Paulinism and from 
Judaistic Christianity, a third thing beside and above 
both? 

Of these hypothetical constructions, which seem to 
exhaust the possibilities of the case,? that of Weizsicker 
possesses the highest measure of probability. His idea of 
the religious attitude of Jesus, as more purely and absolutely 
human and universal than that even of Paul, especially com- 
mends itself as thoroughly reasonable. Weiss has, indeed, 
gained from Hartmann the praise of having given the truest 
account of the Christianity of Christ It is a doubtful 
compliment as coming from a man who thinks Christianity 


1 Urchristenthum, pp. 616, 617. 

2 If not absolutely, at least relatively to the assumption common to all the 
four theories of the genuineness of the four great Pauline Epistles (Galatians, 
Corinthians, Romans). It might entirely alter the whole character and 
course of primitive Christianity if there were grounds for regarding these as 
spurious, and late products of a partisan pen in the second century. There 
have not been wanting men bold enough to advocate this view. Thus quite 
recently, Professor Steck of Bern, following Professor Loman of Amsterdam 
(Questiones Pauline), has presented himself as its champion (Der Galater- 
brief nach seiner Echtheit untersucht, 1888). The resulting conception of 
primitive Christianity is to this effect: The opposition between the real 
Pauline and the original apostolic tendency was not at first very marked ; it 
rose to its height only gradually, and after the death of the Apostle Paul. 
Originally the two tendencies were not so very far apart. Paul was, perhaps, 
a little freer than Peter, but that was all. Only after the death of 
Paul did the antagonism become acute, and even the ‘‘ Pauline” Epistles show 
us the progressive development of one side of it. First, the Epistle to the 
Romans quietly expounds the Gentile-Christian view ; then the two Epistles 
to the Corinthians, assuming a livelier tone, glorify Paul as the minister of 
the new covenant, and advocate a law-emancipated Paulinism ; finally, 
Galatians ventures to storm the citadel of legalism and to assume a defiant 
tone towards the authority of the original apostles (pp. 372, 373). Steck 
regards the Acts of the Apostles as an earlier writing than these four Epistles, 
and a much more reliable source of information as to the character and views 
of Paul. On this new theory Paul assumes a quite subordinate place in the 
history of nascent Christianity, and the Epistles bearing his name, which 
have been supposed by modern critics to be the surest historical foundation 
for their theoretical constructions, are degraded into clever fabrications of 
some unknown writer of the second century. 

8 Vide Die Selbstzersetzung des Christenthums und die Religion der Zu 
kunft, p. 41. : 


438 APOLOGETICS 


is far gone in a process of self-dissolution, and who seems 
bent on ‘reducing the claims of Jesus on the gratitude of 
mankind to a minimum.” It has always appeared to me 
that with all his critical acumen, Weiss lacks the power of 
appreciating the character of Christ, and that the great sub-- 
ject of the evangelic narratives as exhibited in his pages, 
while a very important official personage, is nevertheless 
a commonplace man. It is hard to understand how any 
one recognising the substantial historicity of the Gospels, 
and studying them with unbiassed mind (but there lies the 
difficulty !), can arrive at the conclusion that Jesus was as 
national and narrow in His views and feelings and hopes 
as the ordinary Jewish Christian of the apostolic age. So 
many things in the Gospels of unquestionable authenticity 
point the other way; that passionate abhorrence of Rab- 
binism, that loving, comrade-like relation to the outcasts, 
that significant parabolic comparison of the religious move- 
ment He had inaugurated to new wine and a new garment.” 
Jesus seems to have risen above legalism and Jewish par- 
ticularism without effort or struggle, as a bird rises from the 
ground into the air, its native element. Paul purchased his 
spiritual freedom at a great price, but Jesus was free-born. 
Regarding His early education we have no information; 
He may have been brought into contact in His boyhood 
with the Rabbis, but no trace of Rabbinical influence can 
be detected in the self-manifestations of His manhood. 
The baleful spirit of legalism never seems to have touched 
His virgin soul. Paul’s emancipation came through his 
eventual insight into the inward nature of true righteous- 
ness. That it came to him at all evinced his moral 
superiority to the ordinary Pharisee; but that it came to 
him so late evinces with equal clearness decided short- 
coming from the ideal experience. Why should it be 


1 Vide Die Krisis des Christenthums in der Modernen Theologie. 

? Pfleiderer finds in these parable germs, whose historicity he thinks there 
isno ground for questioning, the revelation of a clear energetic consciousness 
on the part of Jesus of the essential newness of His ethico-religious spirit in 
relation to Judaism. Vide Urchristenthum, p. 365. 


PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 439 


necessary to wait so long to be conscious of coveting, or 


to see that coveting was sin, or to learn that a man might 
be like a whited sepulchre, fair without, full of dead men’s 
bones and of all uncleanness within? Can we not imagine 
one seeing into all that intuitively; and was not Jesus in 
His whole cast of mind and spirit just the one to have this 
instinctive insight and all that went along with it? 

Paul came far short of the ideal, and was much inferior 
every way to his Master, but he was not so dull and slow 
to learn as Weiss has represented him. Nothing could be 
more prosaic than this author’s whole conception of the 
apostle’s religious experience. His conversion was a pure 
and absolute miracle. It was a miracle wrought by an 
external cause, the appearance to him of the risen Christ on 
the way to Damascus. It was not prepared for or rendered 
probable by any antecedent spiritual experience; it was an 
accident so far as any such experience was concerned. By 
his fanatical zeal against the Christians at the time it 
occurred, Saul was not kicking against the pricks of rising 
conviction, but simply seeking to win the favour of God by 
adding to his stock of merit. He might have gone on in 
this course indefinitely had not Christ happened to appear 
to him to stop his persecuting career. Many years after 
his first conversion to Christianity he underwent a second 
conversion to Christian universalism, the cause this time also 
being external circumstances.2 On this view Paul’s experi- 
ence loses all moral contents and his convictions all spiritual 
depth, and from being one of the few very great men of 
the human race, he sinks down to the level of a third-rate 
actor in one of the grand dramas of the world’s religious 
history. One wonders how the greatest of the universal 
religions ever came to be, with such a dearth of insight and 
foresight and initiative in its originators. But the poverty 
is not in them, but in their modern interpreters. | 

For it may be confidently affirmed that not only Jesus 


1 Weiss, Introduction to the New Testament, i. 152, 
8 Ibid, i, 154. 


440 APOLOGETICS, 


and Paul, but even men of the second magnitude, such as 
Stephen, Barnabas, and Apollos, had a prophetic presenti- 
ment that their work concerned mankind. It is not 
credible, as Weiss alleges, that the fanatical rage of the 
Jews against the protomartyr had no more serious cause 
than the free exercise of the recognised prophetic right of 
denouncing unbelief and impenitence, and threatening with 
destruction a people persisting in evil courses! The men 
who stoned him to death acted, doubtless, under the in- 
fluence of a vague but overmastering feeling that his 
eloquence meant danger to Jewish privilege and preroga- 
tive, and portended an incipent religious revolution. His 
doctrine was a fateful word, like that of Mahomet when he 
said, The idols are vanity. What manner of man Barnabas 
was sufficiently appears from the fact of his being sent as a 
deputy from the Church in Jerusalem to Antioch when the 
Greeks there began to receive the gospel? The historian 
calls him “a good man.”® His goodness consisted in a 
capacity for generous sympathy with a new departure, by 
which pusillanimous narrow-hearted men might have been 
scared. It was characteristic of him that on this occasion 
he went down to Tarsus to seek Saul# He knew that 
Saul was the man for the work that had just commenced, 
and that it was the work for which he had been specially 
prepared. The two men were well-matched comrades as 
the agents selected by the Antioch Church for the first 
Gentile mission. We are told, indeed, that it is an entire 
mistake to suppose that it was a mission to the heathen 
that was then inaugurated: it was merely a mission to the 
Jewish Diaspora which by good luck led to conversions 
among Gentiles How the prosaic mind sucks all the 


* Weiss, Introduction, i. 168, where we are informed that it is a 
thoroughly erroneous idea that Stephen appeared in the primitive Church as 
the forerunner of Paul. 

2 Acts xi. 22. 

¥ Acts xi. 24, dvip" &yadés; where the epithet éyabes is to be taken as 
signifying magnanimous, 

* Acts xi. 25. ” Weiss, Introduction, i. 163.4 


ae ait eal 


PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 441 


romance out of history, and levels everything down to flat 
commonplace! If we are to regard the account given in 
the Acts as at all reliable, it is quite certain that something 
creat, unusual, startlingly novel, and solemn, in view of its 
unforeseen possibilities, then took place. The brethren fasted, 
we are told, as men for whom fasting has not become an 
ascetic habit do only on very solemn occasions, The very 
terms in which the Holy Spirit is represented as suggesting 
a line of action to the brethren assembled imply that some- 
thing extraordinary is in contemplation.’ The untranslated 
and untranslatable Greek particle 67, of rare occurrence in 
the New Testament, is very significant. Scholars know 
how frequently it is used in Plato’s dialogues, and what 
liveliness it communicates to the discussion. It is an 
emotional particle, and as used by a Greek must have been 
accompanied by appropriate gestures and uttered with a 
peculiar intonation. As employed by the sacred historian, 
it conveys the idea of a great new thought or purpose 
flashed with the vividness of lightning into the mind. A 
mission to the Diaspora would hardly answer to that 
description. Nor would there be any point in speaking of 
Barnabas and Saul as “called” to such a mission.2 What 
special call or qualifications were needed, unless it were the 
power to resist temptations to home-sickness, which, as it 
turned out, John Mark did not possess ?® 
That Apollos shared Paul’s universalistic attitude is 

sufficiently evident from the manner in which the apostle 
speaks of him in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. “He 
recognises his independence, and that he has his own way of 
teaching, and yet he is conscious of being at one with him 
in the main matter; the conception of the gospel, the 
principles on which they work, the universalism, are the 
same for both.” * 

1 EQopicars 34 wos tov BapydBay, eto. 

3 Acts xiii. 2. 3 Acts xv. 38, 

4 Weizsicker, Das Apostolische Zeitalter, p. 488. Weizsicker points out 


that a similar position of independence and yet affinity in spirit and tend- 
ency is assigned by the Apostle Paul to Andronicus and Junia in Rom, xvi. 7. 


442 APOLOGETICS. 


As already indicated, I do not think there is any solid 
foundation for the attempt to trace certain elements in 
Paul’s theology to Hellenistic influence. In particular it 
seems futile to ascribe to such a source his very character- 
istic doctrine of mystic fellowship with Christ crucified 
and risen as the source of personal sanctity. It is quite 
unnecessary to seek for any explanation of this doctrine 
outside the exigencies of Paul’s own spiritual life. As a 
religious man he felt the need for something more than 
objective righteousness, or pardon, and that something more 
he got by habitually realising his oneness with Christ, and 
so letting Christ’s spiritual influence flow in upon him in 
full stream. As a theologian also he found this train of 
thought useful to him for apologetic purposes, especially as 
helping him to repel the suggestion that on his system men 
might continue in sin that grace might abound. He met 
the sinister insinuation by saying: Thus rather do we 
Christains view the matter; if One died for all, then all 
died with Him. 

While denying that this fertile thought came to Paul 
from any external source, I regard it as quite probable that 
many Christians of Gentile birth felt more drawn by the 
mystic side of Paul’s doctrine of righteousness than by its 
legal aspect, as indeed is the case with many Christians in 
our own time. We must beware, however, of exaggerating 
the importance of the fact, as is certainly done both when it 
is regarded as the effect of a particular type of non-Christian 
thought influencing the minds of Christians, and when it 
is made the watchword of a school or party within the 
Church supposed to have played an important réle in early 
ecclesiastical history. 

From the foregoing een some important inferences 
may be deduced. 

(1) In view of what has been said respecting the per- 
sonal religious attitude of our Lord, the authenticity of 
Sayings universalistic in drift ascribed to Him in the 

22 Cor. v. 14. 


— Aa 


PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 443 


Gospels is not to be hastily suspected, any more than their 
natural meaning is to be explained away. Special texts 
may give rise to critical doubts, but these must be dealt 
with individually, each on its own distinct merits, not 
summarily disposed of by sweeping general assumptions. 
The bearing of this remark will be illustrated in next chapter. 
(2) In view of the evidence produced that there existed 
in the early Church a Christian universalism entirely in- 
dependent of Paul, it is obvious that the presence of a 
universalistic element in any New Testament writing cannot 
by itself be regarded as a proof of Pauline influence. This 
observation applies very specially to the case of one of the 
most important books of the New Testament, the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, concerning the aim, authorship, and destination 
of which the most diverse opinions have been entertained. 
Dr. Baur’s view of this writing is familiar to students of 
modern critical literature. He regarded it as a work of con- 
ciliatory tendency, emanating from the Judaistic side of the 
creat controversy, written by a man who had risen far above 
the narrowness of Judaism, and desired to raise others to the 
same level by exhibiting the ancient Hebrew cultus as a sub- 
ordinate, rudimentary, and transient stage in the process of 
religious development, destined to be superseded by the ab- 
solute eternal religion, Christianity. This conception of the 
aim of the Epistle of course involves the frankest recognition 
of its universalistic standpoint. The implied, though nowhere 
expressed thought of the author, according to Dr. Baur, is 
that the Hebrew religion, with its Levitical ritual, only 
needs to be reduced to its spiritual basis and generalised 
into its ideal import to become the religion of mankind. 
According to Dr. Weiss, the Epistle is of Judaic Christian 
origin, and of course lacks the universatistic element. Dr. 
Pfleiderer, on the other hand, is in full accord with Dr. 
Baur and the great majority of interpreters, in recognising 
the broad humanity of the Epistle, but equally, as a matter 
of course, he attributes that feature to the influence of 
Paul. He places the book in the class of New Testament 


444 APOLOGETICS. 


writings to which he gives the collective title of Christian 
Hellenism or Deutero-Paulinism, having for their character- 
istic the combination of some of Paul’s ideas, especially of 
his universalism, with elements of thought derived from the 
Alexandrian Jewish philosophy. The aim of this class of 
writings in general being, in his view, to counteract a 
tendency to religious syncretism manifesting itself not 
merely among Jewish Christians, but more especially among 
Gentile Christians who had formerly been Jewish pros- 
elytes, he does not accept the traditional opinion that the 
Epistle was originally written for the benefit of a Hebrew 
community. The true source of his bias on the question 
as to the destination of the Epistle is obvious. Its 
alleged Deutero-Pauline character demands a later date 
than the eve of the destruction of the holy city, the most 
fitting occasion for an Epistle addressed to a Hebrew 
Church, and designed to warn them against apostasy and 
its fearful penalty. ; 

There is no good reason for regarding the Epistle as 
Pauline, either at first or at second hand. Its universalism, 
indeed, must be apparent to every unprejudiced mind, but 
just on that account it may be pointed to as one more 
proof of the existence in the early Church of a Christian 
universalism independent of Paul. Who wrote it it is 
impossible to tell. It certainly was not written by Paul. 
With equal certainty it may be affirmed that it was not 
written by an immediate disciple of the apostle’s, the 
whole style of thought being entirely different from that of 
his recognised Epistles. The name of Apollos, though 
unsupported by ancient testimony, satisfies better than 
any other suggestion the requirements of the case, which 
demands an author in sympathy with Paul in his general 
religious attitude, but differing from him in temperament, 
training, and spiritual experience, and consequently in his 
manner of conceiving and expressing the Christian faith. 
Of the aim of the Epistle no better account can be given 
than the traditional one, according to which it was designed 


PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 445 


to preserve a community of Hebrew Christians from 
apostasy at a time of special trial, arising partly from out- 
ward tribulations, partly from lack of true insight into the 
genius and worth of the Christian religion. All other 
suggestions seem by comparison far-fetched and pointless. 

(3) The views we have been led to adopt on the ques- 
tions discussed in this chapter in a large measure take 
away the foundation for the imputation of theological 
tendency to the writers of the New Testament. The 
Tiibingen school, as is well known, were great offenders 
here. In their cut-and-dried scheme, every book took its 
place under some controversial category, and every writer 
had to serve as a more or less conscious instrument in 
connection with some phase of the great dialectic process. 
Thus, the Acts of the Avpostles was written at a time when 
men were weary of the long strife, and would be thankful 
to be assured that it was a mistake to suppose that the 
founders of the Church had been seriously at variance. 
The writer, sympathising with this feeling, set himself to 
promote union by composing a historical romance of the 
apostolic age. To create the desired impression he adopted 
the plan of making Peter, the hero of the first part of the 
work, act in the catholic spirit of Paul; and Paul, the hero 
of the second part, act in the accommodating spirit of 
Peter. 

A theory of omnipresent tendency inevitably acts pre- 
judicially on critical inquiry in two ways: by shaking 
confidence in the truth of narratives in professedly his- 
torical books, and by imperiously determining the dates at 
which particular books were written. The more tendency 
the less fact, and given the tendency of a book its date is 
approximately fixed. Thus, to return to the book of Acts, 
its aim being to create a pleasant though false impression 
regarding the relations of the apostles, the writer had to 
invent his facts, real history supplying no such incidents 
as were necessary for his purpose. Before Baur’s time 
Schneckenburger had propounded the theory of the apolo- 


446 APOLOGETICS. 


getic aim of Acts, and suggested that an irenical purpose 
had guided the writer in selecting the incidents to be 
recorded. But Baur, in adopting the theory for his own use, 
peremptorily negatived the idea of selection, and insisted 
that invention alone would meet the exigencies of the case. 
His contention, if not necessarily valid, at least illustrates 
well how surely imputation of tendency gravitates toward 
denial of historicity. Then as for the date, the book of 
Acts has assigned to it a late origin by the mere fact of 
its being written to gratify the general desire for peace, the 
second century being well begun before men had got into 
that happy mood. 

If the state of opinion in the apostolic age was such as 
now represented, this ingenious theory regarding the book 
in question tumbles to pieces like a house of cards, In 
that case it would not be necessary for the historian of the 
doings of the apostles to invent situations in which Peter 
should appear as a man who shared the views of Paul as 
to the universal destination of Christianity. Why should 
he not act in the spirit of universalism if Paul had not a 
monopoly of that article? And why impute to the his- 
torian any other aim than that of recording transactions 
which he knew to be true and deemed important? Grant 
that he regarded these transactions with the eye of a 
Paulinist, enthusiastically devoted to the cause of Gentile 
Christianity ; his interest was not on that account neces- 
sarily theological or controversial, but might be simply 
religious. And what time would be more appropriate for 
recording them than when they were comparatively recent, 
and when their significance was only beginning to dawn 
upon the mind of the Church? The suggestion does not 
settle the question as to the date of composition, but it 
indicates that an early date was at least possible, if not 
probable. 

In the coarse form which it assumed in the hands of 
Dr. Baur and his followers, the theory of tendency now 
finds little favour. But in a more refined form it still 


a eS es 


PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 447 


lives, and is a fruitful source of bias in critical questions. 
Pfieiderer, eg., has developed a new Tendenz-Kritik in 
connection with his favourite hypothesis that the great 
phenomenon of primitive Christianity was Paulinism and 
its later developments. The one respect in which he 
improves upon the work of his predecessors is, that the 
tendency he ascribes to New Testament writers is not, on 
the whole, so conscious and deliberate as the Tiibingen 
school represented it. The sentiments of a later age are, 
he thinks, occasionally ascribed to the founders of the 
Church involuntarily, rather than with any conscious in- 
tention, the writers being unable to conceive of Jesus and 
the eleven and Paul as thinking otherwise than according 
to the fashion of the time in which they themselves lived 
and wrote. But in some instances he imputes theological 
motive almost as broadly as Dr. Baur. ‘Thus he represents 
Mark’s Gospel, in his judgment the earliest of the three 
synoptics, as written in order to complete and ground the 
Pauline Gospel by a historical account of the life, teaching, 
and death of Jesus Matthew, on the other hand, the latest 
of the three, as he treats it, is little else than an endeavour 
to remodel the evangelic history in accordance with the 
principles of Deutero-Paulinism, after it had become the 
creed of the Catholic Church. Elimination of intention 
in this case is impossible, because the writer of the first 
canonical Gospel is supposed to have the second and third 
Gospels under his eye. The dates assigned to Mark and 
Matthew are in accordance with their supposed aims. The 
former is conceived to have been written not very long 
after Paul’s death, the latter is relegated to the middle of 
the second century. Soke 

This new criticism of the Gospels is not less violently 
theoretical than the older type which it aspires to super- 
sede, and it is certainly as little entitled to implicit 
credence, 

1 Urchristenthum, p. 415, 


448 APOLOGETICS, 


CHAPTER VIIL 
THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS, 


LiteraTuRE.—H. J. Holtzmann, Die Synoptischen Evan- 
gelien ; Weiss, Introduction to the New Testament, Das 
Matthius Evangelium, and Das Markus Evangeliun (vide 
also Bleek’s Introduction to the New Testament, which, 
though older than than of Weiss, is in some respects more 
satisfactory); Bruce, Zhe Kingdom of God; Pfleiderer, 
Urchristenthum (vide also Martineau, Seat of Authority in 
fieligion, in which he largely follows Pfleiderer’s critical 
verdicts); Marshall, “The Aramaic Gospel” in The Expositor, 
1891; J. Estlin Carpenter, The Synoptic Gospels, 1890. 


There are important questions relating to these Gospels 
with which general Apologetic is not directly concerned. 
The problem, eg., presented by their verbal resemblances 
and differences, and the literary criticism connected there- 
with, lie outside our plan, and belong to Introduction. 
The apologist is chiefly interested in the question of 
historicity. 

In this connection much weight must be attached to the 
ancient tradition. The two statements of Papias, reported 
by Eusebius, respecting the reputed authors of the first 
two Gospels, are specially entitled to serious attention. In 
the order in which they are given by the historian they 
are as follow: “Mark being the interpreter of Peter 
wrote carefully, though not in order, as he remembered 
them, the things spoken or done by Christ;” “Matthew 
wrote the Logia in the Hebrew language, and each one 
interpreted these as he could.”! Till recent times it was 
universally taken for granted that the two evangelic writ- 
ings referred to by Papias were our canonical Matthew and 
Mark, the first Gospel as we have it being Matthew’s 
Hebrew original done into Greck. Modern critics for the 

1 Eusebii, Historia cclesiastica, lib. iii. c. 39, 


ee a ee 


THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS, 449 


most part dissent from the traditional view, but not to 
the extent of treating the statements of Papias as of no 
account. They believe that Matthew and Mark did write 
books relating to the ministry of Jesus as Papias declares. 
With reference to Mark critics are not agreed whether the 
book he wrote was our canonical Gospel bearing his name, 
or was related to it as a first sketch to a revised edition, 
the ground for the doubt being that the canonical Mark 
seems to be a somewhat onesided record of the things done 
by Jesus, rather than a balanced account both of things 
done and of things said.t With reference to Matthew, the 
prevailing opinion is that he did not write our first Gospel, 
but a book consisting chiefly of sayings of Jesus, furnished 
probably with brief historical introductions explaining the 
occasions on which they were uttered, though to what 
length the historical element extended is matter of dis- 
putation2 These two writings, Mark’s narrative and 
Matthew’s Logia, critics regard as the two chief sources of 
the Synoptical Gospels, the former of the incidents common 
to the three, the latter of the sayings common to “ Matthew ” 
and “Luke.” As such they form the solid foundation of 
the evangelic history, the guarantee that when two or three 
of the Synoptical Gospels agree in their report of what 
Jesus said or did we are in contact with fact, not fiction. 
In the value thus assigned to the ancient tradition all 
men of sober unbiassed judgment will be disposed to 
acquiesce. They will read the Gospels with the comfort- 
able assurance that for the words of Jesus common to the 
first and third they have one apostle as voucher, Matthew, 
and for the deeds of Jesus common to the three, another 


1H. J. Holtzmann (Die Synoptischen Evangelien) is the leading advocate 
of an Urmarkus. 

2 Weiss strives to magnify the amount of the historical element in the 
Logia. Holtzmann, on the other hand, ascribes to the Urmarkus a larger 
amount of the didactic element than is contained in the canonical Mark, 
The question at issue between the two critics is which of the two writings 
referred to by Papias was the chief source for our Synoptical Gospels, Weiss 
claiming the distinction for Matthew's Zogia, Holtzmann for Mark’s 
document, : 


27 


450 APOLOGETICS. 


apostle’s authority, that of Peter, of whose preaching, 
according to Papias, Mark’s narrative was a digest. Crriti- 
cism which disregards, or treats as of little value, suvh 
precious morsels of information as those preserved by 
Eusebius is open to the suspicion of being under the in- 
fluence of & priort bias. Such bias is very apparent when it 
is given as a reason for doubting the connection between 
Mark’s narrative and Peter’s preaching, that the former 
contains a number of “ legendary and allegorical miracle- 
histories,” or when, in defiance of the express statement of 
Papias that Matthew wrote a book of Logia, it is held to 
be altogether doubtful whether the first and third evan- 
gelists drew any of their material from that source, and 
whether we do not rather owe their reports of supposed 
sayings of Jesus largely to their powers of literary 
invention. 

The naturalistic bias, which doubts the historicity of the 
miraculous element, one can understand; but it seems pure 
wantonness to doubt the authenticity of sayings ascribed 
to Jesus by two evangelists, and intrinsically credible as 
utterances of the Master. Why, for example, hesitate to 
take the remarkable passage, beginning “I thank Thee, O 
Father,’? as a bond fide report of solemn words spoken by 
Jesus at some important crisis in His life? Yet Pfleiderer 
invites us to see in this passage a hymn of victory invented 
by Luke, and borrowed from him by the author of the First 
Gospel; a hymn in which the Pauline mission to the 
heathen is celebrated as the victory of Christ over Satan’s 
dominion in the world, and Paul’s cardinal doctrine of the 
knowledge of God and of His Son being hid from the wise 
and revealed to the unwise finds suitable recognition. 
This is tendency-criticism run mad, the tendency at work 
being to make Paulinism in one form or another the one 
great fact and factor in nascent Christianity. 

Theoretic critics tell, each one in turn, their own story 


1 So Pfleiderer, vide Urchristenthum, pp. 414, 416. 
$ Matt. xi. 25; Luke x. 21. 


ene i init ial la i 


ee eee 


eS ee ee ee ee 


ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee 


THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS. 451 


very plausibly, but it helps to deliver simple readers from 
the spell of their enchantment, to compare the results at 
which they respectively arrive. Such a comparison does 
not inspire confidence in the methods and verdicts of 
Tendenz-Kritik as practised by the experts. This may be 
illustrated by placing side by side the views of Baur and 
Pfleiderer respecting the Synoptical Gospels. Take first the 
order in which these Gospels were written. Baur arranges 
them thus: Matthew, Luke, Mark; Pfleiderer simply 
reverses the order, so that it runs: Mark, Luke, Matthew. 
With reference to the historic value of the Gospels the two 
masters are equally divergent in opinion. In the esteem 
of the earlier critic Matthew is entitled to the highest 
measure of credit; for the later he possesses the least. 
Their judgments as to the tendencies dominant in the 
several Gospels are curiously discrepant. Baur thinks 
Mark is studiously neutral, neither universalistic nor 
Judaistic; Pfleiderer thinks he is out and out Pauline. 
Matthew for the former represents a Judaistic conception 
of Christianity irenically inclined towards Paulinism ; for 
the latter it is the mouthpiece of a Catholic Church-con- 
sciousness as remote from the narrowness of Judaism as 
the Fourth Gospel. In reference to Luke the two critics 
are more nearly at one, it being possible for two roads going 
in the most opposite direction to meet at a single point. 
In both critical systems Luke is a Unions-Pauliner, a 
Paulinist with most friendly feelings towards Judaists, and 
bent on seeing a good side in every party. 

Such glaring contradictions tend to throw discredit 
on all criticism dominated by cut-and-dried theories, and 
might seem to justify total disregard of the arguments by 
which the theorists seek to establish their conflicting views. 
And if the aim of the apologist were merely controversial 
he might save himself trouble by leaving the advocates of 
rival critical schemes to refute each other. But his main 
purpose is to establish faith in the historical worth of the 
Gospels, and sometimes important aid towards the attain- 


452 APOLOGETICS, 


ment of that end may be obtained through the study of 
unbelieving attacks, even though they may be far from 
formidable in their logic, and destined to exercise only a 
transient influence on opinion. On this ground it may be 
worth while to devote a little attention to recent critical 
developments. 

The general reflection may here be premised that it is 
seldom difficult for the promoters of ambitious critical 
theories, even when these are directly antagonistic to each 
other, to adduce some facts in support of their views. It 
is, indeed, a poor theory that cannot find at least a few 
phenomena that lend plausibility to its leading positions, 
Baur showed great ingenuity in discovering features in the 
Gospels that seemed to bear out his reading of their 
theological tendencies, and in doing this he rendered per- 
manent service by directing attention to characteristics 
which had previously been to a great extent overlooked. 
We need not grudge the same praise to the most recent 
worker in the same field. Pfleiderer has been as successful, 
for example, in pointing out traces of Paulinism in Mark, 
as Baur was, in his day, in demonstrating the prudential 
neutrality of the same Gospel. With an eye sharpened by 
the desire to find materials to justify inductively a foregone 
conclusion, he has detected in quite a number of instances 
more or less resemblance between words imputed by the 
evangelist to Jesus and well-known Pauline doctrines, 


Thus in commencing His ministry Jesus says: “ Repent 
and believe the gospel.” Here, remarks the theoretical critic, 
as in Paul, faith in the God-given message of salvation is the 
first demand. In the narrative of the first announcement 
of the passion several Pauline echoes are discovered. Thus 
when the evangelist remarks concerning the explicit char- 
acter of the announcement that Jesus spake the word openly, 
he is supposed to have in mind Paul’s “ word of the cross.” 
The terms in which Jesus rebukes Peter: “Thou mindest not 
the things of God but the things of men,” are suggested by 
those in which Paul declares that his gospel, though it be 

1 Urchristenthum, p. 862. 


as 


THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS. 453 


the wisdom of God, is foolishness and an offence in the eyes 
of men. The demand of the Master, that all His disciples 
shall take up their cross and follow Him, is obviously an 
echo of the characteristically Pauline idea of the participa- 
tion of the believer in the crucifixion of the Redeemer, all 
the more that before the event Jesus could not have ex- 
pressed Himself in such language.! Once more, the incident 
of the two sons of Zebedee teems with Pauline allusions. 
Every word of Jesus on that memorable occasion recalls a 
Pauline utterance. “To sit on my right hand and on my 
left hand is not mine to give,” echoes Paul’s doctrine of 
election; “ Whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be 
servant of all,” is a reminiscence of Paul’s statement con- 
cerning himself that though free from all men yet he had 
made himself servant unto all. And the great word con- 
cerning the Son of man coming not to be ministered unto 
but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many, 
corresponds so closely to Pauline expressions concerning 
the self-impoverishment, self-emptying, and self-humiliation 
of the heavenly Christ, that the co-operation at least of 
Pauline influence in the formation of the saying may 
legitimately be suspected.? 


These instances suffice to exemplify the method of proof. 
Suppose we allow almost all that is contended for, and in 
doing so we should be going beyond the limits of truth, 
what does it amount to? To this, that there are corre- 
spondences between the teaching of Jesus, as reported by the 
evangelists, and the teaching of Paul. But was not such 
correspondence intrinsically probable? Was it not to be 
expected that men like Jesus and Paul should think alike 
on the great fundamental truths of religion, such as the 
vital significance of faith, the necessity of self-denial, and 
the connection between moral greatness and the humility 
of love? Such truths are the great commonplaces of 
biblical religion, held and taught with one consent by all 
inspired men whose thoughts are preserved in the Scrip- 
tures, and agreement in them is no proof of dependence 
of one upon another. And if in the cases of Jesus, as 

1 Urchristenthum, p. 884 3 Ibid. p, 395, 


454 APOLOGETICS, 


- reported, and Paul, there be in some instances reason to 
suspect dependence, the question is always open, On which 
side is it? Is the evangelist’s report of Christ's teaching 
coloured by Paulinism, or does Paul’s teaching now and 
then betray traces of the influence of an acquaintance more 
or less extensive with the sayings of Jesus? The possi- 
bility of the former alternative is not denied, all that is 
here suggested is that a mere general correspondence does 
not settle the question either way. 


It may be added that in none of the cases above cited is 
there the slightest ground for alleging Pauline influence, nor 
would any one that had not a theory to defend ever imagine 
that there was. Every one of the sayings possesses intrinsic 
probability as an utterance of Christ, not even excepting 
that concerning cross-bearing as the law of discipleship. 
Death by crucifixion did not begin with the case of Jesus. 
He had heard of it, possibly He had seen it before; He knew 
it to be the most ignominious, painful, and repulsive form in 
which to encounter the last enemy, and even though He had 
not been aware that He was to meet His own end in that 
way, He might have spoken as He did by way of expressing 
the general thought that the faithful disciple was he who, 
for truth’s sake, was willing to endure a felon’s fate. 


The foregoing observations have their full force in refer- 
ence to the so-called “Hymn of Victory”: “I thank Thee, 
O Father.” The genuineness of this’ utterance might be 
supposed to be sufficiently guaranteed by its being common 
to Matthew and Luke, and therefore presumably taken 
from the apostolic book of Zogia. But not to insist on 
this, I simply dispute the conclusiveness of the proof that 
it is a free composition of the Pauline evangelists based on 
characteristic utterances of the apostle of the Gentiles, and 
on the signal success of his career. The affinity between 
this great word of Jesus and the teaching of Paul is fully 
admitted; it might be even more strongly asserted. It 
might be pointed out, for example, that from that word we 
may learn the nature of the spirit of adoption of which 


——-—-; 


a” =_ ™ 


THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS. 455 


Paul speaks, the characteristic marks of a true filial relation 
to God. Jesus the Son in the hour of trial unbosoms 
Himself to His Father, and in doing so reveals a spirit of 
submission, trust, and peaceful fellowship towards God, and 
of independence towards the world, perfected in His own 
case, and capable of being imparted to those who follow 
Him as their Master. The whole utterance is thoroughly 
in sympathy with Paul's teaching in Romans viii, but it 1s 
not Pauline in the sense of being a composition put into 
Christ’s mouth by an evangelist whose mind was steeped 
in Pauline doctrine. It is, on the contrary, according to 
all indications, a true saying of the Lord Jesus. It is in 
keeping with all we know of His mind, and it perfectly 
suits the situation. 


Jesus always spoke of God as Father, and of Himself as 
Son, He acted uniformly on the belief that disciples and 
citizens of the kingdom were to be got rather from among 
the ignorant, despised people of the land, than from among 
the men of the law. He always had faith in His own 
future, and believed that God's kingdom would come bring- 
ing a crown to His head. And He ever promised to His 
faithful ones participation in His own great fortunes: 
crowns, thrones, kingdoms, a full unstinted share in the 
privilege of sonship. As for the situation, it is probably 
more correctly indicated in Matthew than in Luke. In the 
former Gospel the word is represented by implication as 


spoken in an hour of trial, when Jesus is made very con- 
scious of the contemptuous unbelief of the influential in 
Israel; in the latter, on the other hand, it appears as spoken 
in an hour of joy, viz. on the return of the seventy with 
their glowing reports of the signal success of their mission. 
The setting of the word in Luke, and the mission of the 
seventy, or at least the prominence given thereto, may be 
regarded as indications of the Paulinism of the third evan- 
gelist, who, while faithful in reporting Christ's sayings, 
seems to have exercised discretion to a certain extent in 
fixing their historical occasions. The devotional utterance 
of Jesus, while not unsuitable for a season of joy, is pecu- 
liarly suited to a time of trial, when the unbelief of the 
world makes Him fall back on the consolations of His per- 


456 APOLOGETICS. 


. sonal relations to God, and provckes the assertion of His 
importance as Mediator, and of His exitire independence uf 
the patronage and favour of ren priding themselves on 
their wisdom. 


The unceremonious manner in which so very important 
a saying is taken away from Jesus and credited to the 
evangelist, compels us to consider on what principles 
criticism, not bent on proving a theory as to the course of 
early Church history, is to proceed in deciding questions of 
genuineness. Now, one very obvious principle would seem 
to be that it is to be presumed that an evangelist will not 
lightly depart from his professed design in writing a 
Gospel. The good faith of the evangelists is now happily 
admitted on all hands. There is, and there is room for, 
difference of opinion as to what is compatible with good 
faith and good conscience. That may vary according to the 
custom of the time in which an author lives. But if any 
New Testament writer plainly intimates his intention to 
proceed upon a plan, it may be taken for granted that he 
will faithfully adhere to it to the best of his knowledge and 
judgment. Applying this remark to the synoptical evan- 
gelists, we find that Matthew and Mark do not admit us 
into their secret, though their whole manner is that of men 
stating what they believe to be facts. Luke, however, 
does, in his preface, take the reader into his confidence, and 
carefully explains to him his aim and method as an author. 
Without straining his words, we are entitled to infer from 
that preface that Luke is going to tell us what can be 
ascertained, from written sources or otherwise, concerning 
the words and deeds of Jesus. He alludes to the work of 
predecessors as a help in his task, he refers to the twelve 
as the original source of information, and he indicates it as 
his desire to enable his readers to attain certain knowledge 
in the matters of which he writes. All this surely reveals 
a purpose to write, as far as possible, history. 

This is a most important conclusion, which carries much 
along with it, 


THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS. 457 


In the first place, it covers as with a shield the 
historicity of Mark. That Mark was one of Luke’s sources 
is generally admitted by critics.’ It is a point, indeed, on 
which any one can easily satisfy himself, for it requires 
only an attentive perusal of the two Gospels to perceive 
that Luke has reproduced in his pages the substance of 
Mark, and often in the same order. It follows from this 
that Luke regarded Mark as a good source, good in the 
sense of being a reliable report of the apostolic tradition, a 
faithful record of what had been learned from the eye- 
witnesses and ministers of the word. 

But the conclusion drawn from Luke’s preface covers 
more than that portion of his Gospel which is identical 
with Mark. It covers also that which is over and above, 
the large amount of material, chiefly consisting of say- 
ings of Jesus, found in Luke’s pages, to which there is 
nothing corresponding in the Second Gospel, or even in 
the First. Luke’s prefatory statement entitles us to hold 
that he had sources for these sayings, as well as for the 
deeds for which Mark was his chief voucher, and that he 
believed them to be true words of the Lord. In view of 
that statement, to say that the greater part of the material 
in Luke’s Gospel, in excess of Mark, has no distinct his- 
torical source, but is to be ascribed to the literary art of 
the author, is to trifle with his good name, and to magnify 
his intellect at the expense of his conscience. If we are to 
take the evangelist seriously, we must hold that he had a 
source for the “Hymn of Victory,” and for the many 
beautiful words, such as the parable of the Prodigal Son, 
found only in his Gospel, as well as for the parable of the 
Sower, or for the feeding of the five thousand. 

Luke’s shield is broad enough to cover even the head of 
Matthew. When we can control the first evangelist, as in 


1 Pfleiderer, Uschristenthum, p. 416, says: That Mark was one of Luke's 
forerunners, whom he wished to surpass in completeness and orderly 
arrangement is certain, and is hardly doubted now by any one. The 
narrative and order of Mark form the groundwork and frame into which 
Luke interpolates his additional material. 


458 APOLOGETICS. 


all matter common to him with Mark and Luke, or with 
Luke alone, we find that he gives substantially the same 
account. In these portions of his Gospel he obviously 
means to write history. He is not romancing or writing 
fiction for a purpose. This being the character he has 
earned when in company, he is entitled to the benefit of it 
when he is alone. Like Luke, he is sometimes alone, as in 
the gracious invitation, “Come unto me”; in the logion 
concerning the Church, “On this rock”; and in the repre- 
sentation of the last judgment. We must refuse to believe 
that these are compositions of the evangelist, simply because 
when we have the means of testing him we find that he is 
not a man given to inventing, but to simple, honest, matter- 
of-fact narration. 

Yet, withal, it must be admitted that neither Matthew 
nor any of his brother evangelists is a mere chronicler. 
For the writers of the Gospels the religious interest is 
supreme. Their temper is that of the prophet rather than 
that of the scribe. They are truly inspired men, and as 
such their main concern is not to give scrupulously exact 
accounts of facts, but to make the moral and religious 
significance of the facts apparent. Hence a considerable 
amount of freedom in reporting may be noted even in 
Luke, who by his preface seems to lay himself under 
obligation to aim at exactitude in narration. It is not to be 
supposed that in execution he forgets, or is untrue to, his 
preconceived plan. We ought rather to regard it as part of 
his plan to relate the facts of Christ’s ministry so that they 
shall be a true mirror to the spirit of Christ, and give 
readers a just and beneficent conception of His character. 


1 The gracious invitation, according to Pfleiderer, is a composition of the 
evangelist’s, based on a passage in the Wisdom of Sirach (ii. 23); the 
logion, *‘On this rock,” is simply the expression of the Catholic Church 
consciousness as it took shape about the middle of the second century ; 
the judgment programme, in Matt. xxyv., is a beautiful witness to the 
ethical humane way of thinking of the evangelist and of the age in which he 
lived, according to which the lack of Christian faith in the heathen is com- 
pensated by Christlike love, and the dogmatic universalism of Paul is replaced 
by an ethical universalism, Vide Urchristenthum, pp. 518, 520, 582. 


THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS. 459 


Hence omissions of narratives contained in his sources 
which might be misunderstood, such as the story of the 
Syrophenician woman reported by Mark ; also of duplicate 
narratives which might be regarded as superfluous, such as 
the second feeding of the multitude, also reported by Mark, 
to make room for new matter of a pronouncedly evangelic 
type, acts and words of grace, which to the evangelist 
appeared most characteristic of Jesus. Hence the toning 
down of the severer aspect of Christ’s teaching, and 
especially a great reduction in the amount of the anti- 
Pharisaical element, as compared with Matthew. Hence, 
once more, a distinct colouring in the reports of Christ's 
sayings, so as to make the gracious evangelic drift of His 
doctrine more conspicuous. 

Such phenomena of the adaptation of facts to the service 
of mirroring the spirit, suggest the question, How far might 
this process be carried? Can we, for example, conceive of 
an evangelist stepping out of the actual into the possible, in 
order that he might have ampler scope for the embodiment 
of his conception of Jesus than the grudging data of reality 
supplied, especially in the case of a life of so short dura- 
tion? With writings adopting this method of setting 
forth ideal truth we are very familiar in modern times, 
and it has been consecrated to the service of religion by 


1 On these phenomena of Luke’s Gospel, vide introduction to my work, 
The Kingdom of God. In that introduction, as in the above remarks, it is 
assumed that the variations in Luke’s reports of our Lord’s words, as com- 
pared with Matthew’s, are due to the religious idiosyncrasy of the writer, 
and his care for the edification of his readers, It has recently been attempted 
to explain many of the phenomena of variation by the hypothesis of an Ara- 
maic source, in which many of the words were ambiguous and could be taken 
in different senses by persons consulting the source. Vide Professor Marshall’s 
articles in The Expositor, 1891. This may solve some of the problems, 
but by no means all. Luke's variations have a common character. This 
could not be the result of accident ; it brings in the element of preference, 
either in Luke or in the traditional reading he followed, or in both, The 
view given in the text further implies the secondary character of Luke’s 
reports as compared with Matthew's. Pfleiderer labours to establish the 
contrary view, but he overlooks many of the facts bearing on the question. 
Vide Das Urchristenthum, pp. 478-543. 


460 APOLOGETICS. 


some well-known classics. Ancient literature likewise 
supplies some instances, such as the Dialogues of Plato, 
wherein is exhibited an ideal picture of Socrates, and the 
book of Job in the Hebrew canon. A priori it is not 
inconceivable that the method might be applied to Jesus. 
A disciple might say to himself: I desire to show my 
beloved Master as He appeared to me, and for this purpose 
I shall not only report what I saw Him do and heard Him 
say, but also indicate what He would have done and 
said in circumstances which might have occurred, but did 
not actually occur. Viewing the matter in the abstract, 
we are not perhaps entitled to negative dogmatically as 
inadmissible such use of ideal situations for evangelic pur- 
poses. One thing we are entitled to insist on is that 
whatever method an evangelist employs for his purpose, 
he shall be faithful to the spirit. The only justification for 
the introduction of ideal elements would be that they 
enabled one holding up the mirror to Jesus to show His 
character more adequately on all possible sides. And in 
no case would inspiration be more needful than to enable 
an evangelist to use the ideal method wisely, so as to be 
absolutely faithful to the mind and spirit of Him whom he 
undertook to portray. 

It is well known that in the judgment of some we 
have an actual instance of this method applied to the life 
of our Lord in the case of the Fourth Gospel. That view 
will fall to be considered hereafter. Meantime we have to 
inquire whether there be any reason for thinking that the 
synoptical evangelists, all or any of them, have used the 
ideal method to any extent. 

As already indicated, it is not a question as to the legi- 
timacy of the method, but of the actual intention of any of 
the evangelists to use it, Now, viewing the matter in that 
light, it must be admitted that there is no trace of any such 
intention in the first three Gospels. The evidence all points 
in the opposite direction. The problem the synoptists set 
themselves was not: given a clear insight into the spirit of 


THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS. 461 


Jesus to show it to others by a free use of incidents real 
or ideal, but given a sufficient collection of real facts so to 
set them in a continuous narrative that the thoughtful 
reader shall gradually attain a true insight into the spirit 
of Jesus. Their narratives are in their intention objectively 
historical; if any legendary element has found its way into 
their pages it is to be regarded as a tradition, not as an 
invention. This is the view naturally suggested by Luke’s 
preface, and borne out by the whole character of these three 
Gospels. 

There is one instance in Luke in which it might with 
plausibility be alleged that the ideal method has been 
resorted to: the story of the anointing in the house of 
Simon the Pharisee. This, it may be said, it has indeed 
often been said, is simply Luke’s version of the story of 
Mary of Bethany related by Mark, so altered as to make it 
serve the purpose of showing in a signal instance the grace 
of Jesus towards the sinful, in all its touching tenderness 
and magical transforming power. And without doubt the 
serviceableness of the incident to this end constituted its 
attraction for Luke, and supplied the motive for its being 
introduced into his narrative. And equally without doubt 
the story as he gives it, whether a real or an ideal occur- 
rence, is thoroughly true to the spirit of Jesus. Nothing 
was more characteristic of Jesus than His gentle, delicate 
sympathy with the disreputably sinful. If such a thing 
did happen as a fallen impure woman coming into a 
house where He sat at meat, and acting as she is reported 
to have done amid the frowns of Pharisaic guests, it may 
be taken for certain that He behaved towards her and 
spoke of her as Luke represented. And that primitive 
disciples, knowing the Master’s way with sinners well, and 
valuing it duly, might in absence of a good illustrative 
instance invent one, or at least adapt an actual occurrence 
to the purpose, is not unimaginable. Only in that case we 
should have to regard Luke, in view of his preface, as the 
reporter of a congenial tradition, rather than as the inventor 


462 APOLOGETICS. 


of a beautiful tale. But there are several things which are 
against the idea that the story is an invention either at 
first or at second hand. In the first place, the parable of 
the two debtors is an original element. There is nothing 
corresponding to it, or that might suggest it, in the story of 
the anointing in Bethany. Then the moral of that parable 
is equally original. It accredits itself as a saying of Jesus 
by its audacity and its liability to be misunderstood. The 
sentiment virtually taught is: “the greater the sinner the 
greater the saint.” Who could invent such a bold thought, 
and put it into the mouth of the Master? The average 
disciple would be more likely to shrink from it, with the 
result of its falling entirely out of the evangelic tradition. 
Then, finally, this sentiment has to be looked at in connec- 
tion with others said to have been spoken by Jesus in 
defence of His bearing towards the disreputably sinful, as 
forming together with them His apology for an innovating 
love that treated with contempt conventional distinctions 
between man and man. That Jesus was assailed on this 
account is as certain as anything we know about Him; 
that He would be ready with His answer may be taken 
for granted, and what better, more felicitous, more Jesus- 
like answers can be imagined than those ascribed to Him: 
The whole need not a physician; he loves much who has 
sinned and been forgiven much; there is a unique joy in 
finding things lost? With all respect for the evangelists, 
I do not think they could invent anything so good as 
that. Therein Jesus was decidedly “over the heads of 
His reporters.” | 

The section in Matthew’s Gospel which most wears the 
aspect of an ideal history is that containing the great 
commission of the risen Christ to His disciples. For 
critics who assume that. the miraculous is impossible, the 
mere fact that this commission is represented as emanating 
from the risen Christ stamps it of course as unhistorical, 
But leaving that fact out of view, the terms in which the 

1 Chap. xxviii. 16-20. 


THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS. 463 


commission is expressed are such as to arrest the attention 
even of believing students of the evangelic records. One 
notes therein the injunction to administer to disciples the 
rite of baptism nowhere else referred to in the Gospels, the 
full-blown universalism, the Trinitarian formula, and the 
promise of a perpetual spiritual presence ;® all more or less 
suggestive of a later time, and apparently expressive of the 
developed Christian consciousness of the Catholic Church, 
rather than of what was likely to proceed from the mouth 
of Jesus before He finally left the world. 

Two ways of meeting the difficulty have been suggested, 
One is to regard the last three verses of the Gospel as an 
addition by a later hand, corresponding somewhat to the 
Appendix to Mark’s Gospel,‘ and, like it, rounding off and 
worthily ending a narrative which, without the addendum, 
would have a very abrupt close.® This solution, however, is 
purely conjectural, without fact-basis in textual criticism.’ 
The other mode of dealing with the question is to regard the 
words put into the mouth of Jesus as, in the intention of 
the evangelist, not a report of what the risen Jesus said to 
His disciples at a given time and place, but rather as a 
summary of what the Apostolic Church understood to be 
the will of the exalted Lord. On this view the commission 
to the eleven is not what Jesus said to them on a hill in 
Galilee, but what He spake to them in spirit from His 
heavenly throne. For this way of construing the passage 


1 Ver. 19, ‘Teach, make disciples of, all the nations.” 

2“ Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy 
Ghost.” 

8 Ver. 20, ‘And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the 
world.” 

4 Mark xvi. 9-20. 

8 Mark’s narrative closes with, ‘‘ Neither said they anything to any man ; 
for they were afraid” (iPoBovvre yép); Matthew's ex hypothest would close 
with, ‘* When they saw Him, they worshipped Him ; but some doubted” (oi 31 
Dicracay), } 

6 As is well known, Mark xvi. 9-20 is omitted in the most important 
MSS., such as &, B, Nothing corresponding to this occurs in connection 
with Matt. xxviii. 18-20. _ 


464 APOLOGETICS, 


there seems to be some justification in the introductory 
words, wherein the speaker describes Himself as one having 
all power in heaven and on earth. It is the style of one 
no longer walking on the earth, but sharing in heaven the 
world-wide power and providence of God.} 

On this hypothesis the great commission is really an 
idealised utterance of the Lord Jesus, and the only question 
is, Is it faithful to His teaching? We cannot hesitate to 
answer this question in the affirmative. A man of genius 
characterising a preacher of a bygone generation said, His 
meaning comes out in the sentence after the last. Apply- 
ing this to the subject in hand, we may say that the com- 
mission to the apostles is the sentence after the last in 
relation to Christ’s recorded utterances during the period of 
His public ministry. The records do not indeed contain 
any words relating to baptism, but it is not likely that the 
custom of baptizing converts would ever have arisen unless 
there had been some sanction for it in the apostolic tradition 
of the teaching of the Master.2 For all the other features 
vouchers can easily be produced. The universalism of the 
commission does not go much beyond the word concerning 
the preaching of the gospel in the whole world spoken on 
the occasion of the anointing in Bethany.’ The Trinitarian 
formula simply sums up in a single phrase the theology of 
Jesus. He ever spake of God as Father, He called Him- 
self God’s Son, and in the few utterances concerning 
the Holy Ghost recorded in the Synoptical Gospels He 
represents Him as God communicating Himself in His 
grace to receptive souls, the suwmmum bonum. The Christian 
faith in Christ’s recorded teaching, as in the baptismal 
formula, is faith in a Divine Father who sent Jesus His 
Son into the world on a gracious errand, and who bestows 
the spirit of light and purity on those who believe in the 


1 The above is the view adopted by Weiss. Vide Das Matthidus-Hvan- 
gelium, pp. 582-584. 

2 Vide on this point my work on The Kingdom of God, p. 25%. 

8 Mark xiv. 9. 


THE SYNOPTICAL GOSPELS. 465 


Father and the Son.’ Finally, the promise of a perpetual 
spiritual presence is but a legitimate development out of 
germs contained in Christ’s authentic sayings. A spiritual 
presence, as distinct from an eschatological parousia, is not 
unknown to the primitive tradition. It is found in the 
words, “ Where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them,’? whose authenticity 
there is no good reason to doubt. Then the prolonged 
Christian era implied in the promise, “Lo, I am with you 
all the days,” is, there is ground for believing, a real feature 
of Christ’s forecast of the future, as contrasted with that of 
Paul and of the early Apostolic Church’ It was a feature 
in which Jesus was “over the heads of His reporters,” and 
was not understood until events threw light on the signi- 
ficance of His sayings. The primitive Church slowly 
learned that the world was to last longer than they at first 
expected just by its lasting. The destruction of Jerusalem in 
the year 70 A.D. did much to open their eyes. They had 
thought that immediately after the tribulation of those 
days the end would come and the Son of man arrive. The 
end did not come, the world went on as if nothing had 
happened. Then it began to dawn on them that many 
days and years might pass before the final consummation 
took place. The closing words of Matthew’s Gospel reflect 
this altered state of feeling. The fact is suggestive of a 
date of composition subsequent to the great Jewish cata- 
strophe. The great apocalyptic discourse, as recorded in the 
twenty-fourth chapter of the Gospel, on the other hand, 
speaks for a date antecedent to the affliction of Israel, the 
“end” being there connected more closely with the affliction 
than was likely to be done by one writing post eventum. 
The seeming discrepancy is one of the things that might be 
adduced in support of the hypothesis that the great com- 
mission is an addition by a later hand. 
1 Vide The Kingdom of God, p. 258, 


3 Matt. xviii. 20. 
8 Vide The Kingdom of God, chap. xii, 
2G 


466 APOLOGETICS 


The result of the whole foregoing inquiry is to confirm 
the first impression as to the historicity of the Synoptical 
Gospels, which, in the first chapter of this book, the student 
was encouraged to trust, in seeking through them to attain 
to a true knowledge of Jesus. The evangelists have told a 
story reliable in all its main features, which we may read 
with minds undisturbed by the confident assertions of 
critics bent on verifying adventurous theories, 


CHAPTER IX. 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 


LITERATURE.—Sanday, The Authorship and Historical 
Character of the Fourth Gospel, 1872, The Gospels in the 
Second Century, 1876, Articles on the Present Position of the 
Johannean Question in Hxpositor, 1891-2 ; Salmon, Jntroduc- 
tion to the New Testament ; Westcott, The Gospel according to 
St. John (Introduction); Reynolds, “ Introduction to John’s 
Gospel” in Pulpit Commentary ; Reuss, La Bible, Nouveau 
Testament, 6me partie, La Theologie Johannique; The Fourth 
Gospel (E. Abbott, A. P. Peabody, J. B. Lightfoot), 1892 ; 
Watkins, Modern Criticism and the Fourth Gospel (Bampton 
Lectures, 1890) ; Gloag, Zntroduction to the Johannine Writ- 
ings; Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu (two parts, of which second 
translated and published under the title The Teaching of 
Jesus) ; Oscar Holtzmann, Das Johannes-Evangelium unter- 
sucht und erklért, 1887; Weizsicker, Das <Avpostolische 
Zeitalter ; Paul Ewald, Das Hauptproblem der Evangelien- 
Frage, 1890. Vide also Articles in the Contemporary Review 
for September and October 1891, by Schiirer and Sanday. 


The Fourth Gospel presents the hardest apologetic pro- 
blem connected with the origin of Christianity. The stress 
of the problem does not‘lie on the question as to Johannine 
authorship. A question of that kind can in no case be 
vital to the Christian faith. Questions as to the authorship 
of particular biblical books are questions of fact, not of 
faith, They may in some cases be very important to faith, 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL, 467 


but hardly ever essential. In the present instance it is in 
a high degree the interest of faith to assert its independence 
as far as possible of the question of authenticity. For 
while the doctrinal significance of the book is great, its 
claim to have been written by the Apostle John does not 
rise above a high degree of probability. And the faculty 
of estimating the grounds on which the claim rests is 
not at the command of all believers in any considerable 
measure. It varies in different men, not only with theo- 
logical bias, but with knowledge, temperament, and the 
power of historical imagination. Hence the most diverse 
conclusions are arrived at from the same premises. Some 
are confident that the Apostle John did not write the Gospel 
which bears his name, others regard it as beyond all doubt 
that he did, others again know not what to think, and 
incline alternately now to this side and then to that; some 
think he wrote a part of the Gospel, a Grundschrift, while 
others believe that he rather inspired the man who wrote 
the Gospel than wrote it himself in part or in whole. 
Possibly the question may never get beyond this unsatis- 
factory condition; possibly it may be settled conclusively 
by the discovery of some lost book such as the Exposition 
of the Oracles of the Lord, by Papias. Meantime, pending 
such happy discoveries, men will continue to form conflict- 
ing judgments according to their intellectual and religious 
idiosyncrasies.” 

The really vital question is, Have we two incompatible 
Christs in these evangelic memoirs, all professedly or appar- 
ently historic: one Christ in the three synoptists, another in 
the Fourth Gospel by whomsoever written? Have we here 
not merely different material showing the same person per- 
forming new actions and uttering new sayings, but material 
conveying a different general impression not reconcilable with 
that made by the reports of brother evangelists? That there 


1 Reuss says that for a long time to come the question df the origin of the 
Fourth Gospel will be decided for most students by personal disposition, 
Vide La Bible, 6me partie, p. 102. 


468 APOLOGETICS. 


should be a considerable amount of valuable material relating 
to the public ministry of Jesus lying outside the limits of the 
synoptical record, is nowise improbable. It is quite conceiv- 
able that our Synoptical Gospels represent a very one-sided 
tradition, that they are not even the main stream, but only 
a tributary of the broad river of evangelic story, and that 
the stereotyping of this fragmentary representation as if it 
were the whole, in those parts of the Apostolic Church in 
which the three first Gospels arose, was due to the prestige 
belonging to certain sources used in their construction ; 
bearing apostolic names, therefore justly valued as docu- 
ments of first-class importance, yet actually far from com- 
plete as records of Christ’s words and deeds. Matthew’s 
Logia, and Peter’s reminiscences taken down by Mark, 
neither pretending to be exhaustive, might thus together 
become the innocent cause of an impoverished partial 
evangelic tradition being taken for the whole, so making it 
necessary that one who knew that there was much more of 
not less value to relate should write such a book as the 
Fourth Gospel! But what if it should be found on inspec- 
tion that this supplementary Gospel was really not a 
supplement but a substitute, a heterogeneous presentation 
of a great Personage, bearing the same name, but exhibiting 
a spirit, character, and claim foreign to the Jesus of Matthew, 
Mark, and Luke? In that case it would be difficult to 
believe that one of the men who had been with Jesus wrote 
the book. But that would be the smallest part of the per- 
plexity resulting. In the case supposed we should be 
obliged to choose which of the two Christs we were to 
believe in, that of the synoptists, or that of the Fourth Gospel. 

The Church catholic has not felt itself to be placed in 
any such painful predicament. It has found in the three 
first Gospels on the ore hand, and in the Fourth on the 
other, views of Christ distinct, indeed, but not irreconcilable. 
In the former it has recognised the picture of Jesus on His 


1 The above is substantially the view advocated by Dr. Paul Ewald in Das 
Hauptproblem der Hvangalienfrage. 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL, 469 


human side, as the Son of man; in the latter the picture 
of the same Jesus on the divine side, as the Son of God. 
And it is the fact that in the Fourth Gospel the divine side 
of Jesus is shown that has led many to regard the question 
of its authorship as vital to faith, They wanted to be sure 
that the doctrine of Christ’s divinity rested on apostolic 
authority, feeling that unless it was one of the men who 
had been with Jesus that wrote the prologue, in which He 
is called the Logos, His right to the title might rest on an 
insecure foundation. One can fully respect this feeling, 
and yet it is, to say the least, an exaggeration. Our accept- 
ance of the high doctrine of the Logos must rest on the 
inspiration of the evangelist, whoever he was, not on the 
merely external fact of his being one of the twelve. The 
doctrine of the Logos was no part of the personal teaching 
of Christ. It does not belong to the evangelic history, but 
to the philosophy or the theological construction of that 
history. If it represent a true insight into the meaning of 
Christ’s history, it is an insight having its origin, not in 
the witness of the physical eye or ear, but in a spiritual 
illumination indispensable even to a John, and not unattain- 
able by any unknown disciple well instructed in the things 
of the kingdom of heaven, though not privileged to be one 
of the companions of the lop In this connection it is 
important to remember what we have already had occasion 
to note concerning the genesis of the faith of the first 
disciples in Jesus as divine. That faith was not the result 
of speculation, neither was it a direct revelation, either 
from heaven or through the lips of Jesus unmediated by 
religious experience. ‘Tt was due rather to the impression 
made on believing, loving hearts by the poteene holiness, 
the death, and the resurrection of Jesus.| Hence the 
possibility of a fact which might otherwise seem surprising, 
viz. that the highest views of Christ’s person to be found in 
the New Testament, outside the Fourth Gospel, are con- 
tained in the writings of men who had little or no first- 


1 Vide p. 400. 


470 APOLOGETICS. 


hand acquaintance with the teaching of Jesus, that is to 
suy, in the Epistles of Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
The Christology of the proem to the latter book approaches 
very closely to that contained in the introduction to the 
Fourth Gospel, and its objective value to the Church 
depends not on any direct acquaintance of the author with 
what Jesus said or did,—for to that he expressly indicates 
he could lay no claim,—but on the spiritual insight he 
possessed into the religious significance of Him through 
whom God had spoken His last word unto men. 

The external evidence as to the Johannine authorship of 
the Fourth Gospel, on which experts pronounce such diverse 
judgments, cannot easily be summarised so as to put 
ordinary readers in a position to form an opinion of any 
value? In view of the contradictions of men trained to 
estimate the worth of evidence, one may well distrust 
himself, and shrink from the task of arriving at even a 
juryman’s judgment on the question at issue. One who 
feels himself incompetent to play the difficult part of a 
historical critic may reasonably take up the position of 
deferring to the patristic tradition, and to the opinion of 
such modern inquirers as think that the evidence for 
Johannine authorship amounts to little short of demonstra- | 
tion, though unable quite to rid himself of the uncomfort- 
able haunting doubt that it is by no means so strong as 
sanguine reasoners assert.® The assumption of such an 
attitude is justified by the fact that as inquiry proceeds the 
question in debate is being steadily narrowed. The extreme 
views of the Tiibingen school as to the late origin of the 

1 Heb. ii. 3. This text implies that the writer belonged to the generation 
which enjoyed the benefit of the preaching of the apostles. What the Lord 
had first spoken, he and his contemporaries had confirmed unto them by 
those that heard Him. 4 

* For statements of the external evidence readers are referred to books 
dealing expressly with the subject. Sanday’s Gospels in the Second Century 
(1876) and Watkin’s Bampton Lectures for 1890 may be specially mentioned. 

3 Dr. Sanday, writing in The Expositor for December 1891, on the 


external evidence, says: ‘It can hardly prove that the Fourth Gospel 
was written by John in a strict sense of the word ‘ prove,’” 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 471 


Gospel are now virtually antiquated, though still finding 
representatives in such writers as Pfleiderer and Martineau. 
By various lines of evidence the date has been steadily 
pushed back to a time which brings apostolic authorship 
within the range of possibility. The alternatives now may 
be said to lie between the Apostle John and a disciple of 
the apostle, belonging to the Ephesian school, acquainted 
with the traditions of his teaching and under his inspiring 
influence. The difference between these two hypotheses in 
the view of some is still serious, while to others it appears 
trivial; but it is beyond all question that the theory of 
Johannine inspiration, as distinct from authorship, advocated 
by such a weighty writer as Weizsicker, can be regarded 
with equanimity by even the most conservative, in com- 
parison with a theory which relegates the Gospel to the 
middle of the second century, remote from apostolic in- 
fluence, and regards it as the product of new religious 
tendencies and the child of an alien world.’ 

But, granting Johannine authorship, or, at least, inspira- 
tion, the problem of the Fourth Gospel is by no means 
solved, nor is the mind of the perplexed inquirer therewith 
set at rest. Rather the serious difficulty then begins. 
For the question comes to be, How is it possible that a 
Gospel so different in character from the first three Gospels, 
on good grounds regarded as substantially true to historic 
reality, could emanate directly or indirectly from the mind 
of one of the men who had been with Jesus? Till this 
has been seen to be psychologically credible no rest to the 
doubter, or signal profit to the reader, is possible. It 
matters not what the amount of external evidence for 
Johannine authorship may be. Suppose it reached the 
certainty of mathematical demonstration, and not merely a 
fair degree of probability, it would do no more than compel 


1 In the article previously referred to Dr. Sanday says: ‘*T am less sure 
that the conditions might not be sufficiently satisfied if the author were a 
disciple of John, There would then be no greater difficulty in accounting 
for the transference of his name to it than there is in accounting for the 
like transference in the case of St. Matthew.” 


472 APOIAGETICS, 


. sullen silence so long as the mind remained unconvinced of 
the inner harmony between the Fourth Gospel and the 
other three. And when I speak of external evidence in 
this connection, I have in view not merely such testi- 
monies as can be gathered from the writings ‘of the early 
fathers, such as Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Hippolytus, 
but also all particulars that can be gathered from the book 
itself, not entering into the substance of its teaching, that 
point to, or are compatible with, Johannine authorship. 
For example, the numerous incidental references to places 
and customs, which show that the writer was a Jew inti- 
mately acquainted with the topography of Palestine and 
the manners of its people? a fact obviously fitting into, if 
not proving, Johannine authorship. To the same category 
may be referred what may be called the external aspect 
even of some of the most characteristic didactic matter of 
the Gospel. Take, eg., the introductory section concerning 
the Logos. There are two questions that may be asked here. 
One is, Can the view of Christ embodied in the Logos- 
section be reconciled with the synoptical presentation of 
Christ’s person ? the other is, Was it possible for one of the 
men who had been with Jesus to conceive of Him as the 
Logos, or rather could that conception arise within the 
apostolic generation? The former question belongs to the 
region of internal evidence, that, viz. which helps us to 
accept the Fourth Gospel as on the whole faithful to the 
historic personality of Jesus; the latter comes under the 
category of external evidence, having for its aim to prove 
Johannine or apostolic authorship. Now, with reference to 
the external aspect of the Logos idea, it may be argued with 
much force that its appearance in the Fourth Gospel is 
perfectly compatible with the hypothesis that the Apostle 
John wrote it. Assuming that the idea originated with 
Philo, which, however, in the view of some is not a 
necessary assumption, there was plenty of time for it to 


* For illustrations of this vide Bishop Lightfoot’s contribution to The Fourth 
Gospel, Evidence External and Internal of its Johannean Authorship, 1892, 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 473 


gain general currency, and to reach Ephesus, before the 
period at which the Gospel, according to the ancient tradi- 
tion, was written, the last decade of the first century. And 
it is nowise incredible that a John, Jew though he was, 
might find the word useful as helping him to claim for the 
Lord Jesus a place in the Christian view of the universe 
analogous to that of the Logos in the Alexandrian philo- 
sophy Neither is it incredible that by the time the 
Gospel is reported to have been written, the Church’s view 
of Christ’s person had, even in the course of natural evolu- 
tion, reached a point which made the new term needful and 
convenient, Think what a high view of Christ’s position 
in the universe is expressed even in Paul’s Epistles written 
in the fifth decade of the first century, not to speak of that 
set forth in the prologue of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
whose date is disputed, but in all probability ought to be 
placed before the destruction of Jerusalem io. the year 70. 
Among the real or alleged phenomena of the Fourth 
Gospel there are others besides the presence in it of the 
Logos idea, which on due consideration the inquirer may be 
able to regard as not vital to the problem at issue. There 
is, for example, the free treatment of history ascribed to 
the writer by even the more circumspect of modern critics, 
who find in his narratives transparent allegories, theology 
disguised under a historical form.? It were unwise to 
affirm too dogmatically that such a “sovereign handling of 
the history ””* is incompatible with Johannine authorship, 
As already stated,‘ it is & priori conceivable that one of the 
men who had been with Jesus might, to a greater or less 
extent, apply the ideal method to the biography of the 
Master. It is simply a question of what any particular 
evangelist intended to do. Now as to this we have no 
such explicit statement in the Fourth Gospel as is given in 
the prologue of the Third; our judgment as to the author's 


1S0 Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, Erster Tueil, p. 310. 
2 So, e.g., Weizsicker and Reuss. 
- 8 Harnack in Dogmengeschichte, i. 84. 4P, 460. 


474 APOLOGETICS, 


aim and plan must rest on an inspection of the contents. 
And there are some things that seem to indicate a purpose 
to keep in contact with the solid ground of fact, and not to 
move at will in the airy region of imagination. There is, 
é.g., the sober, lengthy narrative of the Passion, in the main 
a repetition of the synoptical story, while possessing its own 
special features. There is likewise the equally sober, briefer 
narrative of the feeding of the five thousand, again sub- 
stantially a reproduction of the synoptical account. From 
the historical character of these sections of the Gospel, in 
which it is in company with the other three, it is natural 
to infer the historicity of other narratives in which it stands 
alone, as, @g., in those relating to Nicodemus, the woman of 
Samaria, and the Greeks who would see Jesus.2 Another 
circumstance cannot but strike the candid inquirer as 
curious. If the narratives, especially the miraculous nar- 
ratives, be, as is alleged, allegories in disguise, how comes it 
that in the first sample of the kind, the story of the turn- 
ing water into wine, the writer has not by a single word 
hinted at his method of teaching, and so furnished his 
readers with a key to the interpretation? That sober 
historical style at the end of the book, in the story of the 
crucifixion, and this quasi-historical style at the commence- 
ment, which coolly invents facts as the vehicles of ideas 
and assumes that every one will understand what it is 
doing, taken together present a combination which, to say 
the least, is very odd and puzzling. The natural way of 
escape from perplexity is to assume that the writer intends 
to relate fact both at the beginning and at the end. 

Yet, on the other hand, there are phenomena in this 
Gospel which seem plainly enough to indicate that through- 


1 Baur objects to this inference, in so far as the history of the Passion is 
concerned, on the ground that even in it the writer of the Fourth Gospel is 
influenced by a peculiar interest, the desire to illustrate the fundamental 
idea which dominates the whole book. He refers in proof to the manifest 
wish to excuse Pilate and throw all blame on the Jews, and to the section 
about blood and water which, he holds, cannot be history. Vide Kritische 
Untersuchungen iiber die Kanonischen Hvangelien, p. 208. 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL 475 


out the narrative the predominant interest for the writer 
lies in the theological or spiritual import of the stories he 
tells. This is specially remarkable in connection with the 
incidents relating to Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria, 
and the Greeks who would see Jesus. In each of these 
cases the story is unfinished, the character is introduced to 
start a discourse of Jesus, and then allowed to drop out of 
sight. The evangelist seems to care nothing for what 
happened to the subordinate actors in the drama, and to be 
solely concerned about the words their brief appearance on 
the stage gave the principal actor occasion to speak, One 
may begin to wonder whether personages who are so 
summarily dismissed be indeed historic realities, and not 
merely dramatic creations designed to give a realistic setting 
to great thoughts of the Master. The incidents, however, 
possess intrinsic probability. 

Another thing that may be regarded as compatible with 
Johannine authorship, and not vital to the apologetic problem, 
is free reporting of those very thoughts of Jesus about 
which there is reason to believe the writer of the Fourth 
Gospel was supremely concerned. That the words of our 
Lord have, as a matter of fact, been very freely reproduced 
in this Gospel is an opinion held by an increasing number 
of reverent and conservative scholars, who firmly believe in 
the Johannine authorship.’ For those occupying this posi- 
tion the question ‘arises, How such free reproduction by one 
who had been with Jesus, an eye and ear witness of His 
personal ministry, is psychologically conceivable? It isa 
question which they have doubtless for various reasons been 
tempted to shirk, but which some recent contributors to 
the discussion of the Johannine question have very fairly 


1 Westcott (The Gospel according to St. John, Introduction, p. lviii) ad- 
mitsthatSt. John has recorded the Lord’s discourses with ‘‘ freedom.” Watkins 
(Bampton Lectures, p. 426) says, ‘‘The key to the Fourth Gospel lies in 
translation.” Sanday (The Authorship and Historical Character of the 
Fourth Gospel, 1872) argues for a modification of Christ’s words through the 
unconscious action of a strong intellect and personality, Still more decidedly 
in his recent articles in The Expositor, 


476 APOLOGETICS. 


and fully faced? Various helpful lines of thought have 
been suggested. One, for example, lays stress on the free 
use of the oratio directa as not only sanctioned by the 
literary habit of the age,? but almost inevitable to one who, 
though writing in Greek, thought in Hebrew. In virtue 
of the peculiarity of the Hebrew tongue “that it has not 
developed what we call the indirect speech,”® it came to 
pass that a writer using that language, or having his mind 
dominated by its idiom, would be obliged to report the 
words of another as if he were giving the tpsissima verba, 
even when all he intended was to give their gist, effect, 
drift, or legitimate consequence. Under this method of 
writing, what seems a literal report might contain only 
the substance of what was said, or it might be impossible 
to tell where the words of the speaker ended, and where 
the comments of the reporter began. But obviously this 
theory will not account for all the phenomena. All the 
evangelists were Hebrews, but there are few who do not 
believe that the synoptical evangelists reproduce the words 
of Jesus with more exactness than the writer of the Fourth 
Gospel. Even in their reports, in those of Luke for ex- 
ample, critics think they can discover a certain measure of 
freedom in reporting, but with considerable unanimity they 
would say that in the Fourth Gospel a much larger measure 
of freedom is observable. The question thus arises, Whence 
this difference ? 

An explanation is naturally sought for in the circum- 
stances and character of the writer. Stress may be laid 
on three things: age, intellectual and spiritual idiosyncrasy, 
and the religious environment. According to the patristic 
tradition, John wrote his Gospel at an advanced period of life, 
half a century or so after the time of his personal companion- 
ship with Jesus. No wonder, we are ready to say, if at 


1 Very specially Dr. Sanday in the articles referred to in previous note. 

* Vide Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God (Bampton Lectures, 1891). 
“The literary habit of the age allowed great freedom in the use of oratio 
directa,” p. 71. 

* Robertson, The Harly Religion of Israel, p. 422, 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 477 


so great a distance from the events the memory even of 
Christ’s never-to-be-forgotten words had grown dim, so as 
to leave in the mind of the aged disciple only a general 
though true impression, which in writing his Gospel he was 
obliged to express in his own language, the exact words 
employed by the Master being no longer at his command. 
This suggestion, however, will not carry us very far, nor does 
it seem as if we could justly lay much emphasis on lapse of 
recollection, in view of the vividness and accuracy with 
which in many cases the external situation of gospel in- 
cidents is reproduced down to the minutest detail, We 
cannot but feel that one who could remember dates and 
places, and even the very hour of the day at which parti- 
cular incidents occurred, could equally well recall words, 
unless there were some other influence at work causing 
them to disappear from consciousness. Such an influence 
we may discover in the transmuting activity of the evan- 
gelist’s mind acting upon the original data, the words of 
the Lord Jesus. These were most liable to undergo trans- 
mutation. Dates, localities, festive seasons, journeys to 
Jerusalem remain intractable to spiritual alchemy ; but 
words provoke thought, they are seeds which develop into 
trees ; and as the tree is potentially in the seed, so a devoted 
disciple may feel that the whole system of thought, which 
has grown up in his mind out of the germs of truth 
deposited there by his Master may be, nay ought to be, 
accredited to that Master. He may therefore deem it 
quite unnecessary anxiously to distinguish between what 
the Master actually said and what grew out of it. He 
may even find it difficult or impossible to make the 
distinction, the mental activity having been so long exer- 
cised, not in recollecting the ipsissima verba spoken by the 
teacher, but in brooding meditation on their import. And 
it is obvious that the stronger the mind of the pupil the 
more likely this was to happen. The commonplace disciple 
might be able many years after to recall almost exactly 
what Jesus had spoken, just becanse in his case the seed 


478 APOLOGETICS. 


of truth had lain in his mind comparatively unfructified. 
But the disciple of original mind, mystic temper, and strong 
spiritual individuality might by comparison fail in recollec- 
tion, just because he had been so prolific in reflection. In 
the one case the corn of wheat abode alone in its unim- 
paired historic identity, because it had not fallen into a 
productive soil; in the other it lost its separate existence 
and lived in the harvest of thought it had produced in a 
receptive spirit. 

Environment also must count for something as a stimulus 
to the process of transmutation. The traditional seat of 
the evangelist when he wrote his Gospel was Ephesus. It 
was a great intellectual centre in which diverse religions 
and philosophic tendencies met, flowing in from all quarters, 
east, west, north, and south, Asia, Africa, Europe. Many 
minds were active there,many catch-words, such as the Logos, 
were current; there was a Christian Church in the city 
full of its own peculiar life, yet not uninfluenced by its 
non-Christian surroundings, and obliged to reckon with 
the multifarious influences at work; and the Apostle John, 
according to the tradition, was at its head, its ruler and 
spiritual guide. His position was one of great responsibility, 
and his ability, as one of the twelve to speak with authority 
about Jesus, would be the chief source of his power to meet 
the requirements of the situation. But the situation would 
also react upon him in his capacity as an evangelic witness. 
It might do so in two ways: First as a stimulus to that 
process of reflection on the words of Jesus already described, 
through which he gradually gained insight into the signifi- 
cance of Christ’s personal ministry; next as creating a 
demand for a statement of the essential truths of the 
Christian faith in terms suited to present needs and modes 
of thinking. Under the former aspect its effect, in con- 
junction with other causes, might be a process of mainly 
unconscious “ translation” of Christ’s teaching into a new 
dialect ; under the latter aspect it would act as a summons 
to a conscious deliberate adaptation of the Christian faith 


— 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL, 479 


to the religious demands of the hour. How far the modifi- 
cations in the reports of our Lord’s words in the Fourth 
Gospel are spontaneous and unconscious, and how far 
conscious and intentional, it may be impossible to deter- 
mine, But we may certainly sce in the prologue an instance 
of the evangelist deliberately setting himself to define the 
attitude and claims of Christianity in reference to current 
systems of religious philosophy aspiring to domination over 
the minds of men. “They talk grandly of the Logos,” says 
the evangelist in effect, “let all earnest souls in quest of 
truth find in Jesus the Logos they seek.” 

If we can conceive it possible for one of the men who 
had been with Jesus to report his Master’s words with such 
freedom as is implied in the substitution of the developed fruit 
for the original historic seed-corn, we shall find no difficulty 
in regarding as a possible feature of his Gospel a certain 
disregard of time or of the law of progress in his narrative 
of the incidents connected with the personal ministry, 
exemplified by the Baptist calling Jesus at the very be- 
ginning “the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the 
world,” and by the first disciples recognising in Jesus at the 
outset the Christ, of whom Moses in the law, and the pro- 
phets did write, the Son of God, the King of Israel. The 
alleged “ foreshortening,” or “ anticipation,” has been ascribed 
partly to defect of memory, partly to the very activity and 
streneth of the evangelist’s mind.’ Possibly it were better 
to trace it to the action of a mystic temperament prone to 
disregard distinctions of time, and to be indfferent to the 
progress of historie development. A mind of this type 
lives in the eternal, and sees all things sub specie eternitatis. 
Eternal life, not a thing of the future, but a present good, 
is the summum bonum brought to the world by Jesus, as 
presented in the Fourth Gospel, and every topic treated of 


1Sanday, article in The Expositor, January 1892, pp. 23, 24. The state- 
ment given in the foregoing part of this paragraph is little more than a free 
reproduction of Dr, Sanday’s views as contained in various passages in his 
recent articles. Vide especially The Hupositor for May 1892, p. 390. 


480 APOLOGETICS. 


1s appropriately contemplated from the eternal point of 
view. The whole earthly life of Jesus is an episode in the 
eternal life of the Logos. Why carefully distinguish be- 
tween now and then, to-day and to-morrow, in the details 
of a life which as a whole is dominated by the category of 
the eternal ? 

After this lengthy statement it may be well to indicate 
distinctly the relation in which an apologist stands to the 
critical questions referred to. He is not called on to 
pronounce dogmatically on these questions, and to say 
whether and to what extent free reporting of evangelic 
incidents and speeches, and dislocation of historic order, are 
actual characteristics of the Fourth Gospel. It is enough 
for him that a large and increasing number of experts say 
that they are, to an extent greatly exceeding the measure 
in which they are traceable in the Synoptical Gospels. 
The question which concerns him is how far the alleged 
phenomena affect the religious value of the Fourth Gospel 
as a source for the knowledge of Christ. The view here 
contended for is, that they are not so vital as at first sight 
they may seem. The efforts of recent scholars go far to 
prove that they are compatible with apostolic, that is to 
say, with Johannean authorship. But if an apostle wrote 
the Gospel, then we can feel tolerably sure that with what- 
ever freedom the acts and words of Jesus have been 
reproduced, the total effect of the picture is truth; the 
mirror held up to Him faithfully reflects His lineaments and 
spirit. We can be sure, for example, that whatever were 
the actual words spoken by Jesus at the well of Sychar, 
the discourse on the true worship put into His mouth, is in 
the spirit of universalism which it breathes, a thoroughly 
reliable representation of His real religious attitude. If it 
were not so, it would be seriously misleading, and further, it 
could not be apostolic in its source. If, on the other hand, 
it be so, then we can not only regard the discourse as in 
its general drift true to the spirit of Jesus, but for all 
practical purposes of Christian instruction use it as through- 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL 481 


out an exact report of Christ’s words, disregarding scruples 
arising out of critical considerations,? 

But now at last we come to the heart of the question. 
Can we say that this Gospel as a whole, in its general drift 
and tendency, is indeed true to the spirit of Jesus, as we 
have become acquainted with it by aid of the first three 
Gospels ? 

A striking phrase in the prologue awakens expectation. 
“Full of grace and truth”:? the words create the hope 
that we are about to have the choice theme they suggest 
amply illustrated, and to be shown the glory of Jesus as 
the Friend of the sinful, and the Teacher of a rich varied 
system of moral and religious truth. Especially do we 
look for an exhibition of that side of Christ’s character 
which earned for Him the honourable nickname of the 
Friend of publicans and sinners, all the more that the 
evangelist makes it evident by the repetition of the word 
“grace” how fully alive he is to the fact that beneficent 
benignant love occupied a prominent place in the public 
ministry of Jesus. “Of His fulness,” he adds, “ have all 
we received, and grace for grace.” Then, as if to apologise 
for the stress laid on that boon, as if it were the gift for 
which above all others Christians were indebted to their 
Lord, he goes on to point out that that which made the 
coming of Jesus Christ into the world an epoch-making 
event, worthy to form the commencement of a new era, was 
precisely that thereby grace and truth, as distinct from the 
law given by Moses, received a worthy satisfying realisa- 
tion. But on reading further we gradually discover that 


1 May we regard John xvi. 12-14 as covering the principle that whatever 
the illuminating Spirit taught a disciple to see in the words of Jesus was a 
word of Jesus? In favour of this is that in this Gospel the Holy Spirit is 
the alter ego of Jesus, John xiv. 16,18. As with Paul, the Spirit is the 
Lord. If this interpretation be correct, then we have in the passage posi- 
tive proof that the evangelist would not think it necessary to distinguish 
between the exact words of Jesus and what they had grown into in his mind, 
but might give all asa discourse of the Master. 

2 John i. 14. : 


2H 


482 APOLOGETICS. 


to illustrate the theme, Jesus full of grace, cannot have 
been a leading aim of the evangelist. One would rather 
say that he regards it as a commonplace not needing illus- 
tration for readers who are supposed to be persons who have 
already received an abundant supply of Christ’s grace, as an 
object both of knowledge and of experience. For, in point 
of fact, there is in the Fourth Gospel very little of that sort 
of material which constitutes the specialty and glory of 
‘the synoptical histories, and justifies the claim of the 
gospel they contain to be called the gospel of pardon and 
hope for the sinful. There are no stories like those of 
Matthew’s feast, the woman in the house of Simon the 
Pharisee, and Zacchzus the publican, illustrating Christ’s 
tender sympathetic interest in the moral outcasts of Jewish 
society ; no apologies for loving reprobates like the whole 
need not a- physician, much forgiven much love, the joy 
of joys is to find things lost. The nearest approach to these 
synoptical features may be found in the narratives of the 
woman of Samaria, and of the woman taken in adultery. 
But in neither case is the lesson directly taught the 
gracious attitude of Jesus towards the erring. From both 
one can learn by inference that the Jesus of the Fourth 
Gospel is the same Jesus of whom Pharisees complained : 
This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. But 
that is not the moral which the author of that Gospel, in 
these stories, makes it his business to inculcate. His lead- 
ing motive in introducing the narrative of the Samaritan 
woman is to report the discourse of Jesus on the true 
worship, and in that of the woman taken in adultery it 
seems to be to show the desire of the Pharisees to bring 
Jesus into bad relations with the legal authorities. The 
mildness of Jesus towards the offender is a subordinate 
point. The difference between the synoptical presentation 
and that of the Fourth Gospel is very apparent when we 
compare two narratives in other respects similar: the 


1 The genuineness of the pericope adultere is extremely doubtful, but of 
that we need not here take account. 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL 483 


healing of the palsied man on the one hand,? and the healing 
of the man who had an infirmity thirty and eight years on 
the other.2. In the one we hear Jesus utter the character- 
istic word of encouragement and sympathy, “Courage, 
child, thy sins be forgiven thee.” In the other there is at 
first no word of sin or forgiveness, but only of a physical 
miracle which, being wrought on the Sabbath day, provoked 
the hostile comments of the Jews; and when afterwards 
sin is spoken of at a subsequent meeting between Jesus 
and the healed one, it is in a severe minatory manner. 

The fair conclusion from all these facts seems to be, that 
while the grace of Jesus Christ, in the sense of redeeming 
sympathy with the sinful, and its cardinal importance in 
the Christian faith, is fully recognised in this Gospel, it did 
not enter into the plan of the writer to enlarge upon it. 
One reason, if not the sole reason, for this probably was 
that the writer had in view, as his first readers, disciples 
supposed to be familiar with the gracious aspect of Christ’s 
character and ministry. 

What then, we ask, was the leading aim of the writer? 
If it was not, as we at first thought, to exhibit the glory of 
Jesus in the fulness of His grace, what else could it be ? 
Apparently it was to show the glory of the Incarnate 
Logos as divine; by a detailed narrative to let it be seen 


1 Matt. ix. 2-8. 

2 John v. 1-15. Oscar Holtzmann makes the general criticism that the 
chief defect of the Fourth Gospel lies in the absence of promises and demands 
in reference to the moral condition of men, ¢.e. words bearing on pardon and 
repentance.—Das Johannes-Hvangelium, p. 92. 

3 John v. 14. 

4 The emphasis with which the evangelist speaks of the love of Jesus to 
His disciples, and the delight he takes in exhibiting the intimate fellowship 
of the Master with his companions during the closing hours of His life 
(chaps. xiii.-xvii.), may suggest the question, Was this ‘‘ grace,” whereof 
mention is made in the prologue, Christ’s love for ‘‘ His own,” the twelve, 
and all others who like them and through them believed in Him? Such 
seems to be the view of Mr. Barrow (Regni Hvangelium, p. 49). ‘* Where 
are the ‘ gracious words’ of Him who drew and held the thronging crowds # 
They are reserved for the chosen few whom the Father has given into His 
hand,” ; 


484 APOLOGETICS. 


how through the dense veil of the flesh the rays of a 
divinity that could not be hid still brightly shone. The 
Christ of the Fourth Gospel seems, in spite of all humiliat- 
ing circumstances, to be a glorified Christ, a Son of man 
who all the while is in heaven. This view seems to be 
borne out by the miraculous narratives of this Gospel, as 
compared with those in the Synoptical Gospels. The dif- 
ference has been broadly expressed by saying that while the 
synoptical miracles are in the main miracles of humanity, 
the Johannine miracles are miracles of state! They appear 
to be wrought not for the benefit of others, but to glorify 
the worker. They are often, objectively viewed, acts of 
humanity; but from the narrator’s point of view that seems 
to be an accident. It was an act of compassion to heal the 
impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, but he was one of 
many selected apparently to exhibit Jesus as a fellow- 
worker with the Father. In the Synoptical Gospels, on the 
other hand, how often do we read: “And He healed them 
all,” the aim of the evangelists manifestly being to exhibit 
Jesus as intent on doing as much good to men as possible. 

This characteristic of the “Johannean” miracles is a 
feature which. must be looked at in any thorough attempt 
to estimate the religious value of the Fourth Gospel. It 
has lately been brought into great prominence by being 
made one of the main grounds of a partition theory as to 
the composition of the Gospel, according to which it con- 
sists of a Johannine source, containing chiefly discourses of 
Jesus, with later additions, including many of the mira- 
eulous narratives, inserted by an editor who imperfectly 
understood the mind of Christ and the meaning of His 
actions. The underlying assumption is that an apostle 
could not so far have mistaken the aim of Christ's 
miraculous works as to tegard them as mere thaumaturgic 
displays of power, Ostentationswunder2 It is incumbent 
on those who believe at once in the unity and in the 


1 Bruce, The Miraculous Element in the Gospels, p. 151. 
2 Vide Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, Erster Theil, p. 238. 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL 485 


apostolic authorship of the Gospel to do their best to 
break the force of this argument by presenting the miracles 
it reports in a more favourable light. For this purpose it 
might be pointed out that the glory which is represented 
as the aim of the miracles is not of the vulgar sort, but, in 
some instances at least, is rather what the world would 
call humiliation or shame. Thus the raising of Lazarus 
glorified the Son of God not merely by showing His divine 
power, but by causing His crucifixion. Then it might 
further be remarked that we are not to assume that the 
evangelist gives a full account of Christ’s motives as a 
miracle worker, any more than of His miraculous works 
whereof He reports only a small selection. He might be 
aware of the humanity that manifested itself in Christ’s 
miracles, and fully alive to its value, just as he knew and 
appreciated the grace of Christ’s ministry, though he passes 
it over as a commonplace. Indeed, we may regard the 
overlooking of the humanitarian aspect of the miracles as a 
mere detail in the more comprehensive feature of the 
Gospel first remarked on, its omission of illustrative in- 
stances under the category of grace, whose importance 
nevertheless it emphatically recognises in general terms. 
Thus far, then, our answer to the grave question under 
discussion must be as follows: The Fourth Gospel does not 
ignore, deny, misconceive, or misrepresent the gracious 
spirit of Jesus as revealed to us in its loveliness in the 
synoptical presentation of His life. The writer knows 
that spirit, and assumes that his readers know it, and have 
received it and its blessing into their hearts. He says 
nothing in his Gospel which contradicts that view of 
Christ’s character, or disparages it; on the contrary, he 
reports words and acts of Jesus in which it is implied and 
presupposed, But, on the other hand, he makes no special 
contribution to its illustration. He has another end in 
view, distinct, though not incompatible. He places the 
emphasis on another aspect of the incarnate life of the 
Son of God, His point is not that the Son of God was 


486 APOLOGETICS. 


gracious, but that the grace manifested was that of a Divine 
Person, and in his zeal to make this apparent he allows the 
grace to retire into the background, and brings the power 
with which it was associated to the front. In his own 
theological way he does indeed set forth the love of Jesus 
to the sinful, as when through the lips of the Baptist he 
calls Him the Lamb of God, and through Christ’s own lips 
he represents Him as giving His flesh for the life of the 
world, as the good Shepherd who giveth His life for the 
sheep, as lifted up that He might draw all men to Him. 
Yet it can hardly be said that this is the burden of the 
story as a whole, in the sense in which this can be affirmed 
of the other Gospels. How the fact ought to affect our 
practical estimate and use of the Fourth Gospel in relation 
to the other three, is a question to be hereafter considered. 
Meantime let us finish our comparison of the two presenta- 
tions of Christ. 

Christ’s antipathy to Pharisaism, which, not less than His 
sympathy with “ publicans and sinners,’ was a conspicuous 
feature of His religious character, according to the synopti- 
cal presentation, is not accentuated in the Fourth Gospel. 
The two classes of society are indeed hardly distinguished, 
being merged in the one comprehensive category of 
“Jews,” who in turn appear as a section of the great 
godless world. Minor shades of moral difference fade 
away before the one radical division of mankind into 
children of light and children of darkness. Yet the 
antagonistic attitude of Jesus towards the religion in vogue 
does find occasional recognition, as in the passage, instruc- 
tive throughout, where He describes Himself as one who 
receives not honour from men, in contrast to those who 
receive honour one of another." The whole matter is here 
ina nutshell. The Pharisee desires and obtains praise from 
his fellows. His is a religion of vanity, ostentation, and 
self-conscious goodness; it is all on the outside, and steadily 
tends to insincerity and hypocrisy. Jesus neither desires 

1 John v, 41, 44. 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 487 


nor obtains the praise of men. His goal is duty, not 
applause. Self is suppressed. Ostentation is abhorrent 
to His lowly mind. His goodness is in the heart, not 
a thing for outward show, and He loves truth in the 
inward parts with a sacred passion. That the religion of 
Jesus was free from the scrupulosity of Pharisaism, not less 
than from its ostentation, is not shown with the amplitude 
of detail we find in the synoptists; but the fact is suffi- 
ciently attested by Sabbatic miracles which give rise to 
altercations somewhat after the manner with which the 
first three Gospels make us familiar. 

It is impossible here to go at length into the question 
how far the general view of the teaching of Christ pre- 
sented in the Fourth Gospel corresponds to that given in 
the other three. It might fairly be contended that under 
an undoubted superficial diversity in form there is sub- 
stantial identity in import.’ Yet, on the other hand, 
candour might demand the admission that such an identity 
cannot easily be made out without some toning down of 
distinctiveness on either side. One would certainly expect 
to find that the obliteration of the distinction between 
Pharisee and “sinner” was not without its effect on the 
Johannean presentation of Christ's doctrine concerning God 
and man. There is really a perceptible difference here. 
God is “the Father” in the Fourth Gospel as in the other 
three. But He is the Father chiefly in reference to the 
Divine Son, and under Him to those to whom the right is 
given to become children of God.® God has no prodigal 
sons.¢ All men are either sons of God or sons of the devil. 
There is no doctrine of the worth of man even at the 
lowest in virtue of his spiritual endowments or possibili- 


1 John v. 5-9, ix. 9-14. 
_ %Such is the view which Wendt endeavours to establish in detail in his 
work on The Teaching of Jesus. 

8 John i. 12. 

4In John iv. 21, 23 Jesus calls God ‘¢ Father” in the hearing of the 
Samaritan woman, a representative of the prodigal class, but it is with 
reference to the ** true worshippers.” 


488: APOLOGETICS. 


.ties. There are no pregnant sayings like that one: “How 
much is a man better than a sheep.” All of this sort 
may be understood and taken for granted, though it is not 
said.) 

In view of the forecoing comparative estimate the 
question arises, What is the proper place and use of the 
Fourth Gospel as a source of knowledge concerning the 
Lord Jesus ? 

Its proper place is second, not first. It is the second 
Jesson-book of evangelic knowledge, not the primer. 
Whether in the intention of the author it was a supple- 
ment to the synoptical account of the life of Jesus, sup- 
posed to be familiar to his readers, it may be impossible to 
determine, but certainly its power to edify largely depends 
on its being used asa supplement. Some are of opinion 
that the Fourth Gospel was first written, and that the other 
three presuppose its existence? It is a very improbable 
hypothesis, contrary at once to ancient tradition, to the all 
but unanimous opinion of modern critics, and to the internal 
evidence of theological development witnessing to a com- 
paratively late origin. But even if the fact were so, the 
gospel, ex hypothesi first in the order of time, would have to 
be treated as second in the order of use. Apart from all 
doubtful questions of date, the Synoptical Gospels must be 
regarded as the “ Propyleum of the Evangelic Sanctuary.” % 

The fact being so, how inconsiderate and mischievous 
must be all comparisons between the Fourth Gospel and 
the other three, which amount to disparagement, and 
encourage neglect, of the latter; as if the Christian disciple 
might leave them on one side, and, ignorant of all their 
rich and varied teaching, religious and ethical, rush at once 
to the second lesson-book. There has been too much of 

1 Wendt’s treatment of the theme ‘‘ God as the Father” is not satisfactory. 
Identity of view between the Fourth Gospel and the other three is brought 
out by an understatement of the synoptical doctrine of Fatherhood and 
Sonship. Vide The Teaching of Jesus. 


2 Vide Halcombe, The Historic Relation of The Gospels. 
* So Reuss, La Bible, volume on The Johannine Theology, p. 107. 


- 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 489 


this ill-judged way of speaking. It began with Clement af 
Alexandria} it was continued by Luther, it received too 
much countenance from Schleiermacher, and it is still echoed 
in a sequacious spirit by some writers on the Gospels. In 
the case of Schleiermacher disparagement of the synoptical 
presentation of Christ almost goes the length of contempt, 
and as showing what this tendency lands in, it may be well 
to reproduce his words. He writes: 


“Nothing betrays less sense for the essence of Christianity 
and for the Person of Christ, as also historic sense and under- 
standing of that through which great events come to pass, 
and how those must be constituted in whom these have their 
real ground, than the view which first quietly appeared 
maintaining that John had mixed much of his own with the 
sayings of Christ, but now, having grown strong in stillness 
and furnished itself with critical armour, ventures on the 
bolder position that John did not write the Gospel at all, 
but a later author invented this mystic Christ. But how a 
Jewish Rabbi with benevolent feelings, somewhat Socratic 
morals, some miracles, or what at least others took for such, 
and a talent for uttering apt maxims and parables (for 
nothing more remains, nay, some follies we have to pardon 
in him according to the other evangelists): how, I say, one 
like that could have brought forth such an effect as a new 
religion and church, a man who, if that was all that could be 
said of him, could not be compared to Moses and Mahomet, 
is not made clear to us.” ? 


Few now will go as far as that. Still, in the writings 
of orthodox defenders of the authenticity of the Fourth 
Gospel comparisons are made to the effect that in the 
synoptics we read chiefly of the external life of Jesus— 
His intercourse with men and His discourses to the multi- 
tude, whereas in John we see into Christ’s inner nature 


1 Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., lib. vi. 14) reports Clement as saying that John, 
seeing that the somatic aspects of Christ’s ministry were shown in the Gospel, 
and exhorted by His companions, under divine inspiration wrote a spiritual 
(xvevwxrixdv) gospel. The work from which Eusebius quotes is lost, 

2 Ueber die Religion, p. 309. 


490 APOLOGETICS, 


- and behold the very heart of Jesus disclosed? The 
inquirer who desires to know Jesus truly will do well to 
regard with a measure of suspicion such statements. The 
fact is not as represented. The heart of the man Jesus in 
its rich fulness of grace and spiritual truth is more ade- 
quately shown in the first three Gospels than in the Fourth. 
The writer of that Gospel, as we have seen, did not even 
propose to exhibit in detail the fulness he speaks of in 
the prologue. He writes for readers whom he assumes to 
have already received of that fulness, and by some means 
to have mastered the lesson we learn now through the 
Synoptical Gospels? Briefly put that lesson is: God in 
His righteousness and grace revealed through a holy loving 
human character. That lesson the Fourth Gospel does not 
cancel, but throughout implies, and in some places teaches. 
But its superadded specific lesson is: God in the glory of 
His Majesty and Might revealed as it were behind a lowly 
humanity, the glory of the only begotten Son shining 
through the fleshly veil. As teaching that lesson it may 
fitly supplement the synoptical presentation, but it cannot 
possibly supersede it. 

The Logos theorem need not deter from such supplement- 
ary use. It is not the key to the Gospel. Instead of 
explaining everything, it is itself a riddle that needs to be 

2 Vide Gloag, Introduction to the Johannine Writings, p. 156. 

2 Reuss says: ‘‘The Gospel was written for intelligent disciples” (La 
Bible, La Theologie Johannique, p. 49). Again: ‘‘The author has not wished 
to teach history, he supposes it known, and aims at interpreting it,” p. 18. 

8 Reuss, to quote him once more, remarks: ‘‘ The idea of Christianity in 
the Fourth Gospel is not intelligible till the synoptical presentation has been 
assimilated. To make the Johannean theology the starting-point is to mis- 
take the intentions of the Master and the destination of the Church,” p. 107. 
On the other hand, Weizsicker thinks that the Johannean Christusbild is an 
indispensable supplement of the synoptical, and that only through it have 
we the explanation of the whole higher influence of Christ’s personality. 
“The great charm of that picture, which the ancients expressed by saying 
that the other Gospels give the body, this the soul of the history, and which 
still exercises its power in a similar sense, rests on this that the whole subse- 


quent effect of the life, and the results thereof for faith, are here introduced 
into the history itself.”—Das Apostolische Zeitalter, p. 656, 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL 491 


explained. It is not explained by an offhand reference to 
Philo. The term Logos may hail directly or indirectly 
from Alexandria, but not the idea the evangelist associates 
with it! The Logos of Philo is an intermediary between 
a transcendent, absolute deity, and a world with which 
he can have no relations. God is not so conceived in this 
Gospel. He is indeed described as One whom no man hath 
seen at any time, and whom the only begotten Son declares,” 
put He is also represented as loving the world and giving 
His Son for its salvation? and as raising the dead and 
quickening them. If He does not exercise the function of 
judgment, it is not because it is beneath His dignity as the 
Absolute, but because He deems it equitable that men 
should be judged by one who is Himself a Son of man.° 
The Son does not work instead of a Father too exalted to 
do anything; He works with and as the Father.® It is not 
the Son alone who dwells with the faithful, the Father also 
is immanent in them.” The idea of God is distinctively 
Christian. So is the idea of the highest good. There is 
indeed frequent mention of the knowledge of truth as if 
the summum bonum were gnostically conceived. But the 
knowledge spoken of is attained through the doing of God’s 
will® The ruling spirit of the Gospel is not gnostic or 
speculative, but ethical. In that respect it is worthy to 
have an apostle for its author. And in no respect does an 
apostolic authorship seem incredible. It has indeed been 
pronounced beyond belief that a companion of Jesus could 
come to think of Him as the Incarnate Logos, or that any 
power either of faith or of philosophy could so extinguish 


180 Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, i. 85. For the extremist type of the 
opposite view, vide Thoma, Die Genesis des Johannes-Evangelium, 1882. 
For Thoma the Fourth Gospel is a life of Jesus after the type of Philo’s 
Vita Mosis, allegory everywhere, fact nowhere. 

_ 3 John i, 18. 3 John iii. 16. * John v. 21. 

5 John v. 22, 27. According to Oscar Holtzmann the Logos idea has only 
the value of a Hilfsvorstellung in the Gospel, because the transcendence of 
God is not carried out Das Johannes-Evangelium untersucht und erkldrt, 
p. 82. 

6 Johny, 19,20, © 7 John xiv. 23. 8 John vii. 1%. 


492 APOLOGETICS, 


the recollection of the real life and set in its place this 
wonderful image of a Divine Being.” If we have rightly 
regarded the Gospel as intended for the use of disciples 
assumed to be familiar with the primitive evangelic tradi- 
tion, the writer must have conceived it possible for his 
readers to combine the two images. He could hardly have 
thought this possible for them unless he felt it to be pos- 
sible for himself. Why then should it be possible for a 
scholar of John’s who had got the human image from his 
lips, or from current tradition, or from the Synoptical 
Gospels, and impossible for John himself, who had got that 
image from personal intercourse with Jesus? It seems as 
if the capacity to effect the combination depended not on 
external circumstances, but upon spiritual idiosyncrasy. 
Given the mystic temperament already spoken of, the 
problem seems not insoluble. It becomes then simply 
another example of the habit of regarding all things sud 
specie ceternitatis, with comparative indifference to historical 
sequence, the state of exaltation anticipated, at least in 
part, the Son of man even while on earth represented as in 
heaven, 


CHAPTER X. 
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 


LiTERATURE.—Ladd, The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture; Lux 
Mundi; Martineau, The Seat of Authority in Religion; 
Stanton, The Place of Authority in Religious Belief; Gore, 
Bampton Lectures on the Incarnation (Lect. vii.); Herrmann, 
Der Begriff der Offenbarung (Vortriige der Theol. Konferenz 
zu Giessen) ; Clifford, The Inspiration and the Authority of 
the Bible; Briggs, The Bible, the Church, and the Reason ; 
Leopold Monod, Le Probleme de L’ Autorité, 1891. 


To the burning question, Who or what is the seat of 
ultimate authority in religion? the most recent apologetic 
2 Weizsiicker, Das Apostolische Zettalter, p. 585. 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 493 


answers, Christ: Christ, not other religious masters, not the 
individual reason, not the Church, not even the Bible. 

The lordship of Christ over the conscience is a common- 
place accepted by all Christians. But it is the fate of 
commonplaces, especially in religion, to be neglected in 
favour of propositions less fundamental, more doubtful, much 
controverted, and which, just because they are the subjects 
of controversy, excite exceptional interest and monopolise 
attention. So it happened that the great commandments 
of the Decalogue were made of none effect by Rabbinical 
traditions, the offspring of zeal for the keeping of the 
divinely-given law. A similar mischance has overtaken 
the authority of Jesus. For one section of Christendom 
the Church has taken His place as Lord, for another the 
Bible; in either case without intention, and for the most 
part without consciousness, of disloyalty. The question as 
to the seat of authority is sometimes formulated without 
reference to Christ, the only alternatives thought of being 
the Bible, the Church, or reason. In view of such facts, it 
is incumbent to resurrectionise the buried commonplace, 
- and to reassert with emphasis that Jesus Christ is the Lord 
of Christendom, and the Light of the World, 

Authority has been not only misplaced, but so grievously 
misrepresented in its nature that the very word, as em- 
ployed in the sphere of religion, has become an offence to 
the friends of truth and freedom. It has been exercised in 
the name of God with brute force: sometimes in behalf of 
the false, creating a deep sense of wrong; sometimes in 
support of truth, creating against it a violent prejudice. It 
has been claimed for Scripture misconceived as a Book of 
Dogma, having for its raison d’étre to teach a system of 
doctrinal mysteries undiscoverable by reason, and incom- 
prehensible by reason, with the result that revelation has 
been made to appear the antithesis of reason. The claim 
has been made to rest on the external evidence of 
miracles and prophecies conceived of as purely evidential 
adjuncts of a doctrinal revelation; evidence capable at 


494 | APOLOGETICS, 


- most, when skilfully stated, of silencing opposition, but 
having no power to produce religious faith in a revelation 
not in itself acceptable or self-evidencing. In view of 
these abuses, which form a large chapter in the history of 
Christianity, it is of urgent importance to recall attention 
to the claims of Christ to be the Master, and to bid such 
as labour under the burden of doubt listen to His voice 
when He says, “ Learn from me.” So doing they shall 
escape, not only from doubt, but from every form of 
usurpation ; from all that savours of Rabbinism in religion, 
and from the irritation inflicted on reason and conscience 
by its galling yoke. For there is, indeed, in Jesus and 
His teaching a “sweet reasonableness.” His yoke is easy ; 
His authority is gentle as the light of day. What He 
says about God and man and their relations needs no 
elaborate system of evidences to commend it. It is self- 
evidencing. It is rest-giving. Heart, conscience, reason 
rest in it. Men who have long wandered in darkness leap 
for joy when at last they come to the school of Jesus, and 
discover in Him the true Master of the spirit. Such was 
the experience of men in ancient times coming to Jesus - 
from the schools of Greek philosophy ; such is the experience 
of many in our day who had despaired of attaining to 
religious certainty. 


Christ is not the only claimant to lordship in religion. 
He divides the world with other masters. In view of the 
wide prevalence of Buddhism and Mahometanism, it may 
seem bold to call Christ the Light of the World, and as if 
modesty required us to be content with the ascription to 
Him of a merely provincial authority. But no Christian 
can acquiesce in this compromise. Faith demands for its 
Object a universal sway «that at the name of Jesus every 
knee should bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord 
to the glory of God the Father. And, if necessary, faith 
will undertake to justify its demand by a comparison of 
Jesus with other religious initiators. Such a comparison, 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 495 


indeed, is not indispensable to legitimise the Christian’s 
exclusive homage to Jesus, nor in discussions on the seat 
of authority in religion does it usually enter as an element. 
In these days, however, when the scientific study of religion 
on the comparative method is so much in vogue, it is 
well, both for confirmation of the faith of the individual 
Christian, and for the vindication of missionary enterprise, 
to be ready with an answer to those who ask us to show 
cause why Christianity should supersede all other religions. 
A course of study on “Christ and other Masters,” } if not 
an essential department of apologetics, would be at least a 
very helpful special discipline. It is a study which a 
believer in Christ has no temptation to shun. Christ gains 
by comparison, As in our studies in the second book of 
this work we found that occasional comparisons with con- 
temporary religions served to evince the superiority of the 
religion of Israel, so we should find on placing Jesus side 
by side with Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Mahomet, that 
He stood visibly higher than they. This line of inquiry 
cannot, of course, be gone into here; all that is possible is 
to indicate its utility, and to explain briefly the method of 
the argument. 

The method.is comparative. The argument goes to show 
that Jesus is wiser than other masters; that the Christian 
religion is superior to other religions in all important 
respects, and therefore, on the principle of the survival of 
the fittest, ought to supersede them. Such a mode of 
reasoning may appear unsatisfactory to an enthusiastic 
faith, Nothing will satisfy it but proof that Christianity 
is not only better than this or that religion, but the best 
possible, the absolute religion, and therefore destined eventu- 
ally to become universally prevalent. By all means let 
such a proof be led if it can; yet let not the other less 
ambitious, more circuitous, line of argument be despised. 
Unsatisfactory as it may appear, it was the line of argu- 
ment pursued by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 

1 This is the title of a work by Mr. Hardwick on the religions of the world. 


496 APOLOGETICS, 


- in his endeavour to establish the claims of Christianity to 
be the perfect, and therefore the final religion. “The best 
possible,” was his thesis, but his method of proof was 
“Christ better than prophets, better than angels, better 
than Moses, better than Aaron; therefore listen to Him 
when He speaks, more attentively than to any other speaker 
in God’s name.” It cannot be amiss to follow His example, 
and, extending his argument beyond biblical limits, to say: 
Christ better than Buddha, better than Confucius, better 
than Mahomet, better than every name that has been held 
in reverent esteem; therefore hear ye Him, all peoples that 
dwell upon the face of the earth. It were well if mission- 
aries were able to issue modern versions of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews adapted to their respective spheres of labour, 
and furnished with wise citations of the facts which justify 
the demand they make for earnest heed to the voice of 
Jesus. 

The comparative argument has the merit of simplicity. 
It can be understood and appreciated by all, learned or 
unlearned, black or white, savage or civilised. There is 
that in every man that makes him ascribe a certain 
authority to all wisdom and goodness, Every human 
being tends to bow before a saint or a sage. Every human 
being has further the power, more or less developed, to dis- 
criminate between degrees of sanctity and wisdom, as he 
has the power to see that the light of the sun is greater 
than the light of the moon. “God made two great lights ; 
the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to 
rule the night.”1 How shall I know which of the two 
lights, the sun and the moon, is entitled to be regarded as 
the greater light? It is a matter of eyesight, of the power 
to appreciate the difference between daylight and night- 
light. If the superiority.of daylight is not evident to my 
eye, all the argument in the world will not convince me of 
it. But there never was a man, having the use of his eyes, 
who needed any such argument. Even so there is in the 

1Gen. i. 16, 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 497 


natural conscience a faculty to see that one light in the 
moral world is greater than another. Show a man, even in 
Africa, first the moon and then the sun, and he will see for 
himself that the sun is the greater light, to be welcomed, 
as men welcome the dawn of day. 

The comparative argument has the great recommenda- 
tion that it permits frank recognition of all the good that is 
in ethnic religions. To praise the sun it is not necessary 
to maintain that he is the only light. You can recognise 
the moon, and even wax eloquent on the weird beauty of 
her dim light, without compromising the claims of the ruler 
of the day. Still less difficult ought it to be for the 
Christian to acknowledge the minute lights of pagan night, 
and to say in thankfulness, not in scorn, “He made the 
stars also.” 


Among the rival claimants to be the seat of authority in 
religion is the individual reason. The light within the 
only, and the sufficient, source of revelation, and the test of 
all alleged revelations: such was the watchword of the 
deists, and there are those in modern times who re-echo 
the sentiment. In the case of the deists the thesis was 
asserted with a self-complacent and even contemptuous dis- 
regard, not only of the light from above, but even of the 
aid derivable from the wisdom of the past, or from a care- 
fully conducted education. The plain uninstructed man, 
even the savage, might know all that needs to be known of 
God as well as, nay even better than, the most learned 
philosopher. Modern rationalists have a more adequate 
sense of the weakness of the individual reason, of the need 
of extraneous aids, and of the vast extent to which every 
man is indebted to the religious history of the past, and to 
the inspirations of the present. The idea of the social 
organism has taken firm possession of the public mind, and 
all realise the truth of Paul’s saying, “None of us liveth to 
himself.” Nevertheless there are those who teach that 
human reason, or rather God immanent in human reason, 


21 


498 APOLOGETICS. 


is the seat of religious authority, that nothing can properly 
be described as revelation except such religious intuitions 
as come to us though the action of reason, and that all aid 
from without, from whatever quarter coming, must take the 
form of a stimulus “ which wakes the echoes in ourselves, 
and is thereby instantly transferred from external attesta- 
tion to self-evidence.” ! 

In criticising this theory it is not necessary to take up 
the position of utter antagonism, and to pronounce it 
entirely false. There is much in it with which one can 
cordially sympathise. We can repudiate, for example, not 
less earnestly than Dr. Martineau and those who agree 
with him, the old-fashioned antithesis between reason and 
revelation as belonging to an exploded deistic conception of 
God’s relation to the world as purely transcendent. The 
light from above must not be placed in abstract opposition 
to the light within, as if the two had nothing in common. 
The light from above is no light for me until it has become 
a light within shining in its own self-evidence. It is in 
vain that the sun shines if I have not an eye to see its 
beams. Then, so far as I am concerned, the light shineth 
in darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not. But 
the light may be there all the same, and it may be owing 
to some disability in me that it is not a light within as 
well as a light without. And this is one direction in which 
the rationalistic theory is at fault. It does not take suffi- 
ciently into account the disabilities of reason. It assumes 
reason to be in a normal condition, whereas its eye may be 
dim through the influence of an abnormal moral condition. 
Dr. Martineau has much to say of the faith-woven veil 
that hides the face of the true Jesus. He has not suffi- 
ciently borne in mind the veil that is on the face of the 
human soul, preventing it from seeing the light of God. 
Must that not be taken into account in order to understand 
the religious history of the world? Whence comes it that 
men have been so backward in learning the knowledge of 

1 Martineau, The Seat of Authority in Religion, preface, p. vi. 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 499 


God? Why must the heathen religions, after the most 
generous allowances, be pronounced unsuccessful ? Why is 
it that the utterances of sages are often so disappointing 
and so contradictory, and that the wisest words of the wise 
have taken the form of a sigh for a surer word than any 
they have heard from others, or have themselves been able 
to speak? It is on account of the moral evil that is in 
the world, and partly also on account of the physical evil 
that oppresses the life of man. By reason of the one the 
sense for the true and the good is blunted, by reason of 
the other men have not the courage to trust their spiritual 
intuitions, and are the victims of an incurable doubt of 
the goodwill of God. On both accounts there is room and 
need enough for a surer word, if any such might be forth- 
coming, 

This brings us to another defect of the theory under 
consideration, viz. its failure to recognise the possibility of 
some one appearing in the world possessing an altogether 
unique exceptional power of spiritual intuition, and of so 
speaking of God as to wake the “echoes in ourselves "— 
making us see things as we had not seen them before, or 
trust thoughts of our own hearts which had before seemed 
too good news to be true, It is not necessary that all 
men should be in the dark; it is conceivable that there 
should be One in whom was the true life and the true 
light, whose mind was the express image and radiance of 
the mind of God. Such an one the Christian finds in 
Jesus. -And it is because Jesus has for him this value 
that he recognises Him as an ultimate religious authority. 
It costs him no effort to do so. He is not conscious of any 
violence or humiliation done to his reason in bowing to 
the authority of Christ. For Christ speaks with authority 
just because He does not speak dy authority, like the Rabbis 
citing the names of celebrated teachers in support of state- 
ments possessing no intrinsic power to commend themselves 
tc acceptance. He speaks as the spontaneous mouthpiece 
of God, of nature, of the forces of human nature working 


500 APOLOGETICS. 


down in His soul. God reveals Himself to His spirit as a 
Father, and He constantly calls Him Father. The world 
in its beauty and sublimity unfolds itself to His eye, and 
He speaks with inimitable simplicity of the lilies, birds, 
and stormy winds. Almighty pity stirs His bosom as He 
witnesses the sin and misery of men, and He speaks to the 
fallen the message of pardon and regeneration. A vision 
of heavenly purity and goodness bursts on His view, and He 
discourses of the kingdom of heaven, and in golden sentences 
declares who are its citizens: Blessed the poor, the meek, 
the pure, the peaceable, the passionate lovers of righteous- 
ness. The sweet reasonableness of all this is irresistible. 
It is the very reason of God, the universal reason, find- 
ing normal, perfect, adequate expression, and correcting, 
strengthening, enlarging, in one word, “educating”? the 
reason of man. ‘Truly the yoke of this Teacher is easy. 
His way of teaching, and the substance of His teaching, 
show at once the objective reality of revelation, and its 
intimate relation to reason. He says things not said before, 
or not so said as to be of use, yet recognisable at once 
when said, as true and worthy of all acceptation. Take the 
one instance of calling God Father. To all practical intents 
this was a new name for God, as Jesus used it. Yet the 
new name was recognisable at once by unsophisticated 
consciences as expressive of the deepest truth concerning 
God, and the most welcome. How strange that men should 
have been so long in finding out a truth so simple and so 
acceptable! The thought might easily suggest itself even 
to the most primitive men that. God was to all men what 
a father is to his family. Nay, it had suggested itself to 
the early Indian Aryans, witness the name Dyaus-pitar, 
heaven-Father. But men had not the courage to trust 
their own spiritual intuitions, They could not seriously 


1 Mr. Gore well says: “All legitimate authority represents the higher 
reason, educating the development of the lower. Legitimate religious 
authority represents the reason of God educating the reason of man, and 
communicating itself to it.”—Bampton Lectures on the Incarnation, p. 181. 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 501 


believe anything so good concerning God. An evil 
conscience made that difficult, and also the manifold 
tragic experiences of life. And it is in this connection 
that the need and utility of an objective revelation be- 
come very apparent. The function of revelation is not, 
as has been supposed, to reveal truths which the human 
mind is unable to conceive! It is rather to convert 
conceivable possibilities into indubitable realities? to 
turn, ¢g., the fancy or dream of God as a Father into a 
sober fact. Christ did that by Himself believing with all 
His heart in the Fatherhood of God, and by being Himself 
a heroically loyal Son. The revelation lay not in what He 
said so much as in His own personal religion and conduct. 
He realised the good in His own character, and He believed 
in spite of all temptations to the contrary that God wills 
the good, and by His almighty providence works incessantly 
and supremely for its realisation, And simply in virtue of 
being the one man in history who has done these two 
things perfectly, Jesus is a most veritable and valuable 
objective revelation, mightily helping us to be the sons of 
God, and to believe stedfastly in Him as our Father, and 
winning from those He helps joyful recognition as their 
authoritative Master. 

Thus far all believers can go in acknowledging their 
indebtedness to Jesus. Some go much further and say, 
It is owing to Jesus that we really believe that there 
is a God at all. That is to say, they claim for Jesus not 
merely to have brought our spiritual intuitions out of a 
state of mere virtuality into conscious vigorous exercise, 
but to have given us that knowledge of God which men 
have striven to acquire by the methods of natural theology. 
Such thinkers disallow the ordinary proofs for the being 
and nature of God, drawn from the idea of God in the 


1 Such is the view of W. R. Greg in The Creed of Christendom, vol. fi, 
p. 172. 

* Vide this view stated at greater length in The Chief End of Revelation, 
pp. 27-31. 2 


502 APOLOGETICS. 


human mind, or from the appearance of design in nature, or 
from the existence of the world as a whole. They regard 
these reasonings as fine words which scholars at their ease 
coin in their studies, but which when the heart is tried by 
the sense of sin, and by the darkness of life, have really no 
persuasive power, but leave men in doubt whether God be 
indeed good, or whether He even so much as be. It is 
only when the eye is directed to Christ that there arises 
for the man who sitteth in darkness a great light by which 
he sees at once what God is and that God is! This view 
is a revolt against the traditional method of theologians, 
which lays a foundation in natural theology for revelation, 
nothing doubting that its reasonings are sound, and its 
results sure. While not prepared to take sides with the 
authors of this revolt, or to accept offhand the philosophical 
presuppositions on which it rests, I feel considerable sym- 
pathy with the religious attitude therein assumed. How 
much or how little the so-called proofs of natural theology 
will actually prove for us depends on the state of mind in 
which we enter on their examination. We find what we 
bring. We are convinced at the end because we were 
convinced before we began; and that we were so con- 
vinced may be due to a Christian nurture which has 
saturated our whole spiritual nature with the idea of God 
from our earliest years. In this view even Dr. Martineau 
so far concurs. He holds that the order in which natural 
and revealed religion are usually placed must be inverted ; 
that the reasonings of the natural theologian “lead to 
explicit theism because they start from implicit theism, 
which therefore stands as an initial revelation out of which 
is evolved the whole organism of natural religion.”* The 
point of divergence between Dr. Martineau and the school 

1 So Professor Herrmann of “Marburg in Der Begriff der Offenbarung, an 
address delivered at the conference in Giessen in 1887. The addresses were 
published in 1888 in collective form under the title Vortrdge der theologi 


schen Konferenz zu Giessen. Herrmann’s essay is a very fresh discussion of 


the idea of revelation. 
2 Seat of Authority in Religion, pp. 312, 313. 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 503 


of Ritschl, as represented, for example, by Herrmann, is this: 
For the English theologian “revealed religion” means the 
thoughts of God, which come to men intuitively through 
the natural action of their own reason; for the German 
theologians it means the thoughts of God which give rest 
to reason, conscience, and heart, but which came to us 
through the knowledge of Christ, and which but for His 
appearance in’ the world we never should have had as a 
living belief acting as an effective force on our lives.* | 


On the authority of the Church it is not necessary to say 
much in general apologetic. One who has, after a spiritual 
struggle, at last got himself grounded in the essentials of the 
Christian faith may be left to adjust his relations to the 
community of believers the best way he can. To those, on 
the other hand, who need help in fundamental problems, 
it would not be expedient to speak of the Church, except 
indeed in the way of apology, not as one claiming for 
her authority, but rather pleading that a considerate and 
generous view should be taken of her shortcomings. Pre- 
judice against Christianity arising from the sins of the 
ecclesiastical organisation that bears Christ’s name, and 
professes to be guided by His spirit, is certainly one of the 
facts with which a defender of the faith has to reckon, He 
may try to dispose of it as a source of unbelief by pointing 
out that the sins of the Church have to a large extent been 
sins of infirmity rather than of wilful disloyalty ; that it is 
no presumption against the supernatural origin or initial 
purity of the Christian religion that in its subsequent 
development it was left to run its natural course, exposed 
to the degeneracy and corruption that are apt to befall 
everything that man has to do with; and that Christ Him- 
self was under no misapprehension as to the future for- 
tunes of the kingdom of God in this world, but predicted 
coming evils and described them in the most sombre 
colours. 

1 Vide the address referred to in note 1, p. 502 


504 APOLOGETICS. 


That a society of men professing in common a religion 
must in the nature of things exercise over its members an 
influence in a very real sense authoritative, is self-evident. 
The claim of the Church to authority, viewed in the light 
of this axiom, is not exceptional; it is simply a particular 
instance of a universal law. What has to be remarked 
concerning the Church, considered ideally, is the peculiar 
reasonableness of her claim. What is the ideal Church ? 
It is a body of men believing Jesus Christ to be the Son 
of God, with a faith not received by tradition but communi- 
cated directly by the Father in heaven to each _ believer. 
Each man for himself has clear insight into the divine 
worth of Jesus, passionately loves the goodness exhibited 
in His character, and with sincere, deep fervour reverences 
Him as the Lord. What a close, mighty bond of union this 
common relation to the Head! What a power the mutual 
cohesion thence arising gives the society as a whole over 
the individual member! How much he will bear in the 
way of authoritative decision of doubtful matters of opinion 
and conduct, rather than break away from so_ blessed 
a fellowship! And with what good right the society will 
be felt to decide, whether in formally assembled council, as 
when the question of circumcision was debated at Jeru- 
salem, or by well understood, though not distinctly formu- 
lated, pervading sentiment! The pure in heart see God 
and truth clearly. Therefore what they bind or loose on 
earth shall be bound or loosed in heaven, Their judg- 
ments have real, not merely technical value. What they 
approve is worthy of approbation; what they condemn, of 
condemnation. If one or more members of the society 
find themselves out of accord with their brethren they will 
distrust their own judgment, and loyally acquiesce in the 
judgment of the majority, which will be made easy for 
them to do by the consideration of the latter for all sincere 
difference of opinion, and by the supreme desire on their 
part also to maintain at all hazards the fellowship unbroken. 
In such a society it is not so much one part that ruleg 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 505 


over another, as love that rules over all; now constraining 
the few to submit to the many, now constraining the many 
to defer to the few, all alike acting in a spirit of loyal 
devotion to the common Lord. 

A fair ideal indeed, but it hardly ever existed on this earth, 
at least it exists no longer. If the “true” Church mean 
the Church of the ideal, then there is no “ true” Church 
in this world. There are many religious societies called 
Christian Churches. They cannot all be right in their 
doctrine; none of them may be altogether right in their 
spirit. In view of this possibility the important question 
is not the abstract one as to the nature and limits of Church 
authority, but what Church has the moral right to exercise 
authority ? Church members may answer the question in 
favour of their own communion, and by a mental effort 
invest it with the attributes of the ideal. That will some- 
times be hard work, and what is more important, it may 
be dangerous. It is possible to be too submissive a son of 
mother Church. Circumstances are easily conceivable in 
which it might be said with truth: the more of a Church- 
man the less of a Christian. In such circumstances it is 
necessary to rebel against the Church in order to be 
loyal to Jesus, to be anti-ecclesiastical in order to avoid 
being anti-Christian. 

Speaking generally, with reference to the actual situation, 
it may be said that a believing man does well to be jealous 
of Church power for Christ’s sake. The Church is a mother, 
and like that of all mothers her influence is helpful up to 
a certain point, and beyond that is apt to be a hindrance 
to spiritual development. She is fond of managing, and 
does not readily recognise that in the case of many of her 
grown-up sons the best thing she can do is to leave them 
to the guidance of a higher wisdom. The ecclesiastical 
spirit does not foster, or value, vigorous, intractable indi- 
viduality. It has too often driven men of this type into 
dissent or into banishment, thinking it better they should 
be without than that the comfort of passive obedience 


506 APOLOGETICS, 


should be disturbed within. Yet what is a Church without 
such men—men of earnest thought and robust moral senti- 
ments, but a salt without a savour? To repress or oppress 
spiritual independence is to quench the spirit of Christ. 
It was observed of the men that had been with Jesus 
that they were bold: they had the courage of their 
opinions. God often speaks through minorities, even 
through solitary individuals who are in a minority of one. 
It was so in the Hebrew Church, even when the nation 
not the individual was the social unit, and when to break 
with national custom was considered a crime. It is so 
still in the Church of the New Testament, And the 
Church needs constantly to be reminded of the fact. The 
value of energetic personalities endowed with initiative is 
now fully recognised in science and in commerce. Dis- 
coverers and inventors are welcome. But in religion, more 
than in any other human interest, the power of custom 
is strong. The passion for solidarity, the intolerance of 
dissent, characteristic of uncivilised men, still survives 
there. In one aspect it commands respect, for there is 
conscience in it. But there is more than conscience; there 
is moral disease. It is the form which egotism assumes in 
the religious world. Church authority is enforced against 
individuals by men who are themselves, perhaps uncon- 
sciously, guilty of individualism of the most offensive type. 


No one who, with intelligence, asserts the supreme 
authority of Christ can possibly mean to disparage the 
Scriptures of either Testament. They are writings which 
“testify of Him,” and in virtue of this fact must possess 
for every Christian a unique authoritative value. They 
are His own word, and the channel through which He 
exercises authority. In cherishing a high and reverent 
esteem for the Scriptures, we only follow Christ’s own 
example. He ever spoke of the Hebrew writings in a 
manner involving express or implied recognition of their 
divine truth and worth, Thus, to take a single typical 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 507 


instance, in the Sermon on the Mount, speaking as the 
Herald and Legislator of the kingdom of heaven, He said : 
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the 
prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil;” law 
and prophets standing for the whole Old Testament. 
Christ’s sincere, deep reverence for the Scriptures becomes 
invested with peculiar significance when viewed in con- 
nection with His intense antagonism to Rabbinism. That 
antagonism means that nothing in the piety of Jesus was a 
matter of custom or mechanical acceptance of tradition. 
He believed in nothing as true or good simply because it 
passed for such in the religious world of His time. His faith 
and reverence were invariably based on spiritual insight 
and personal conviction. Not because the scribes busied 
themselves about the sacred book as the one supremely 
important subject of study, did He deem it worthy of 
devout attention. On the contrary, as used by them the 
book must have been repulsive to Him. He had to clear 
His mind of whatever He knew of Rabbinical use that He 
might be able to cherish a hearty liking for it, just as He 
had to rid Himself of current ideas of the Messianic hope 
and of the kingdom of God, before either could have any 
reality or value for His religious consciousness. As things 
stood, He could take nothing for granted in the whole 
range of morals and religion, but had to go back on first 
principles, and with regard to all the spiritual treasures of 
His people ask, What is the real as distinct from the cur- 
rent worth of these things? And when He entered on His 
public ministry He appeared as one who had formed His 
own estimates, and was in possession of transformed con- 
ceptions alike of Bible, kingdom, and Messiahship. And 
with regard to the first, His verdict was in effect: The 
book is divine, full of the spirit of truth, wisdom, and good- 
“ness, supremely useful for guidance in life, setting forth 
views of God and man and duty to which one can with a 
pure conscience say Amen. 

Yet while infinitely more reverent as compared with 


508 APOLOGETICS, 


that of the Rabbis, Christ’s attitude towards the Scriptures 
was not, like theirs, one of indiscriminate, idolatrous admira- 
tion. His use was critical. Some books He quoted often ; 
others He did not quote at all. He had a graduated sense 
of the relative importance of the matters treated of. He 
distinguished between “ weightier matters” in the law? and 
things of minor consequence. The ethical was in His 
esteem of far more importance than the ritual; it was for 
Him the supreme category. To it as a test He brought 
every custom or statute, however venerable; and if He 
found any wanting, judged by the royal law of love, He 
unhesitatingly pronounced them imperfect and _ transient, 
though they might have a place in the Mosaic code. In 
all this He differed from the Rabbis. For them all Scrip- 
ture was alike important; all laws great or small alike 
binding in theory, in practice the small more than the 
great. Who dared presume to call any law small, defec- 
tive, or temporary that God had commanded ? 

In all this we must follow Christ rather than the Rabbis. 
Recognising Him as an authority in His general attitude of 
reverence for the Scriptures, we must further recognise 
Him as an authority in His discriminating use of the 
Scriptures. Nay, in the very fact of that discriminating 
use we must recognise Christ setting Himself as an 
authority above the Scriptures. He judges them, teaches 
the right, reasonable, profitable method of using them, as 
opposed to the wrong. Loyalty to Him as the supreme 
authority requires that we should accept His verdict, and 
use the sacred writings in His spirit; and above all, that we 
should be careful not so to use them that He shall be eclipsed 
and His own teaching made void. To this caveat, in general 
terms, all will assent; the practically important matter is 
to realise the possibility of making the grave mistake, and to 
know in what directions danger is to be feared. As to the 
possibility, it is illustrated by the case of the Jews. They 
searched the Scriptures, as men only could who believed 

2 Matt. xxiii. 23. 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 509 


that their salvation depended on the quest; yet they missed 
Christ. On their way of using the Scriptures no other 
result was possible. How could worshippers of the letter 
accept as their Messiah one who valued only the spirit? 
what could men to whom the Bible was a book of 
law do but reject one for whom it was a book of inspira- 
tion ? 

A tragic error; can it happen now? Is it possible by a 
wrong use of the Bible to-day to miss Christ; to miss Him, 
not in the sense of forfeiting all share in His salvation, but 
in the sense of utterly failing to do justice to His claims as 
the Supreme Master in religion? If we may accept 
evidence from the biography of modern religious doubt, we 
must conclude that it is possible to lose Christ in the Bible 
and through the Bible® And if it be asked how that 
happens, the answer suggested both by experience and by 
theory is: It comes about through not realising that the 
Gospels are the core of the Bible. Here at last is the 
elect Man towards whom for many centuries the history of 
elect Israel has been pointing. Here is He who as one 
having the standing of a Son speaks God’s final word to 
men. Surely one oughi to give supreme attention to what 
He says by word, deed, character, and experience! Yet 
there are men who are constrained to confess that they 
have not done so. After years of search for truth, and 
with a good general knowledge of the Bible, they turn at 
last to the Gospels as to a terra incognita, The theoretical 
explanation of this experience offered by those who have 
duly reflected on the phenomenon is that in such cases the 
Bible as a whole, instead of Christ in particular, has been 
regarded as the authority in religion. The point is of such 
moment that it may be well to quote words in which it is 
~ 1John v. 39. 

3 Take one instance. Harrison (Problems of Christianity and Scepticism, 
p- 282), giving an account of his own experience, says: ‘‘ How I found my 
way out of the darkness is easily told, for it was in fact the only way. It 


was by finding Christ Himself. I had lost Him even in the Bible, At last 
I turned to the four Gospels and stayed there.” 


510 APOLOGETICS. 


stated with all needful breadth and clearness.) Wendt 
writes: 


“The view that the historical teaching of Jesus Christ 
was the perfect revelation of God for men has been always 
theoretically recognised in the Christian Church, and has had 
its place assigned it in dogmatic teaching in regard to 
the prophetic office of Christ. The necessary practical 
application of this view, however, has been cramped on the 
part of Catholicism by the theory of the infallible authority 
of Church teaching, and of Protestantism by the theory of 
the normative authority of the Holy Scriptures for Christian 
doctrine. When the Holy Scriptures, as a whole, are re- 
garded as expressing the immediate revelation of God, the 
sayings and discourses of Jesus are, indeed, viewed as part of 
the contents of Scripture; but there is no definite reason for 
emphasising their specific pre-eminence over the other con- 
tents of Scripture. Even Paul has in reality had a much 
greater influence in moulding the form of Christian doctrine 
in Protestantism than Jesus Himself.” ! 


The principle that some parts of Scripture are of more 
importance than others is not one which any party will be 
inclined to dispute. On the contrary, it has been to a 
wide extent expressly recognised,” and still more extensively 
acted on. The religious spirit has asserted the right to 
have regard to its own edification in the selection and use of 
Scripture. Its preferences have been on the whole pretty 
uniform. In the Old Testament it has done honour to the 
Psalms, the Song of Songs (spiritually interpreted), and 
Isaiah, specially the second part, neglecting Proverbs, 
Ecclesiastes, and the other prophets; in the New it has 
favoured the Fourth Gospel, the leading Epistles of Paul, 
especially that to the Romans, and in certain circles the 
Apocalypse, and left the three first Gospels comparatively 


1 The Teaching of Jesus, author’s preface, p. 2. 

2 The Directory for the Public Worship of God, prepared by the West- 
minster Assembly, commends ‘‘ the more frequent reading of such Scriptures 
as he that readeth shall think best for edification of his hearers, as the book 
of Psalms and such like,” 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 511 


in the background.) It is permissible, while conceding to 
faith the right of preference, to suggest respectful doubt 
as to the wisdom with which it has been exercised. In 
particular, it may be confidently asserted that the neglect of 
the Synoptical Gospels is a serious error, and a suicidal act 
of self-impoverishment. 

It is an obvious corollary from the position stated by 
Wendt, that the teaching of Christ must guide us in 
estimating the religious value of the Old Testament. This 
view having been already enunciated,’ it is not necessary 
here to enlarge on it; repetition, however, may be pardoned 
as tending to give it due and needful emphasis. Let it be 
understood then that it is not only our right but our duty 
to carry the ideas of God, man, and their relations taught 
by Jesus, back to the Old Testament, and to regard all 
herein not in conformity therewith as belonging to the 
defective element whose existence must be recognised as a 
matter of course by all who have grasped the idea of a 
progressive revelation, If, from a mistaken feeling of 
reverence, we fail to act on this principle, we allow the 
mounlight to eclipse the sunlight, and go contrary to the 
rational axiom of the ‘Apostle Paul, “ When that which is 
perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done 
away.”® Some of the phenomena coming under the cate- 
gory of defect have been indicated in a previous chapter, 
and the list admits of being extended. © 

In the New Testament Christ is conceived to be the one 
Speaker. “God, who spake to the fathers by the pro- 
phets, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us by 
a Son.” All other speakers, whether by voice or written 
page, are simply witnesses or interpreters. The several 
books of the New Testament have been admitted ‘into the 

1 So Eibach in his Giessen Address (1888) on The Scientific Treatment and 
Practical Use of the Holy Scripture. 

2 Vide p. 323. 81 Cor. xiii. 10. 4 Book II. chap. x. 
| 8 Vide Clifford, The Inspiration and the Authority of the Bible (chap. v.), 


a small but suggestive and helpful book, 
6 Heb. i. 1. | 


512 APOLOGETICS. 


collection because they were believed by the early Church 
to be in harmony with the mind of Christ, and to be helpful 
to the understanding of His gospel. Formally the prin- 
ciple by which canonicity was determined was apostolic 
authorship direct or indirect, it being assumed that all 
apostles, and all intimately associated with them, were in 
possession of an inspiration and spiritual intelligence which 
would guard them against misconception of whatever per- 
tained to the Christian faith. In reality, however, the 
judgment of the Church was based on the conviction gained 
by devout perusal that the various books included in the 
canon were consistent with each other, and all together in 
harmony with the doctrine and spirit of the Master. And, 
speaking comprehensively, it may be affirmed that the 
judgment of the Church was right, though the reasons given 
in particular instances might be wrong, or at least pre- 
carious. Thus no one possessing due insight doubts the 
right of the Epistle to the Hebrews to a place in the 
authoritative literature of the Christian religion. But few 
now set value on the reason which induced the ancient 
Church, after long hesitation, to recognise the canonicity of 
the Epistle, viz. that it had the Apostle Paul for its author. 

The settlement of the canon of the New Testament was 
a weighty problem, demanding for its wise solution due 
acquaintance with historical traditions, and, still more, 
spiritual discernment and sober, unbiassed judgment. 
Without cherishing superstitious ideas of Church authority, 
we may rationally pay great deference to the final verdict 
of Fathers and Councils. Still such deference does not 
foreclose inquiry. Every Christian has a right to examine 
into the matter for himself, and to hold himself in suspense 
in regard to the canonicity of particular books, as tested by 
the principle of essential agreement with the mind of Christ 
in moral and religious teaching. It were better for a time 
to doubt the canonicity of a book, even under a misunder- 
standing, than to allow its supposed teaching to obscure the 
light of great leading Christian truths. Luther was not a 


THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 513 


heretic because, in his jealousy for the doctrine of justifica- 
tion by faith, he pronounced the Epistle of James a strawy 
Epistle. He was simply a man who had made a mistake 
in exegesis biassed by a one-sided, narrow conception of the 
doctrine which he championed. 

The question of the New Testament canon, while inter- 
esting and important, is not vital to faith. Faith could 
live and even thrive with a very reduced New Testament: 
the Synoptical Gospels and Paul’s four all but universally 
recognised Epistles might suffice to start with. Hence it is 
not necessary in general apologetic, which concerns itself 
only about what is urgent, to deal at length with the sub- 
ject of the canon, going into the history of its formation 
and the claims of particular books to a place therein. For 
all that relates to such matters the student must be referred 
to books specially treating of them.1 The Gospels have 
received exceptional attention for obvious reasons. They 
are the main source of our knowledge concerning Christ 
and the Christian religion, and it is of urgent importance 
to assist the inquirer to arrive at a satisfactory conviction 
as to their substantial historicity, their fidelity to the spirit 
of Christ, and their essential harmony. If Jesus be the 
ultimate authority for the Christian, it is most needful to 
know with all the exactness and fulness possible what He 
was and what He taught as shown in the professed records 
of His life in this world. 

The sphere of Christ’s authority is religion and morals, 
not science, whether sacred or secular. In defining His 
mission He said that He came not to destroy the law and 
the prophets. It may also be said that He came not to 
tell us who wrote the law or the prophecies, or when or in 
what order the various books of the Hebrew Bible were 
written. In this view the Christian intelligence of our 
time acquiesces with increasing unanimity. Let it suffice 


1 Vide Westcott-on 7'he Canon of the New Testament ; Charteris, Canon- 
icity ; Reuss, History of the Canon of Holy Scripture. For the Old Testa- 
ment consult especially the work of Professor Ryle. 

bea 


514 APOLOGETICS. 


to state it without going into questions concerning the 
limits of Christ’s knowledge. 

In the foregoing pages the authority of Christ has been 
exalted above that of all other claimants. But it has not 
been set in antagonism to any legitimate authority. Christ’s 
attitude is not one of zealous antagonism but of grand 
comprehension. His teaching sums up and crowns the 
best thought of the wise in all ages and lands. It is 
throughout in affinity with reason. The just, wholesome 
authority of the Church depends on the measure in which 
Christ’s spirit dwells in her. “The testimony of Jesus is 
the spirit of prophecy.” Therefore Christianity is the 
absolute religion. It is indeed God’s final word to men. 
On the simple principle of the survival of the fittest, it is 
destined to perpetuity and to ultimate universality. 


GENERAL INDEX. 


omens 


Axssotr, Dr. Edwin, on the virgin 
birth of Jesus, 409. 

Abraham, his call, 198, 

Acts (The) of Apostles, Peter and 
John before the Sanhedrim, 415 ; 
Paul’s conversion, 420; critical 
views on, 445. 

Agnosticism, account of, 146 ; Her- 

ert Spencer on, 147; hostile to 
faith, 148; can be agnostic if we 
please, 162; religious atrophy, 
162; agnostic religions, 163. 

Amos, the prophet, 178; disputed 
texts in his book, 179 ; God a just 
ruler over all, 180; on prophetic 
inspiration, 191; idea of election, 
193 ; prominence of ethical ele- 
ee in, 234; his ideal political, 
252, 

Anthropology, criminal, recent studies 
in, 102, 

Apologetic, function and method of, 
22; distinct from apology, 33; 
definitions of, 85; aim of, 37 ; 
method, 39 ff. 

Apologists, older, on prophecy, 234, 
242; on miracles, 376. 

Apology, of Christ for loving sin- 
ners, 5; principles underlying, 6; 
distinct from apologetic, 33. 

Apostles, the, choice of, proof of 
Christ’s wisdom, 879 ; doubted by 
Havet, 379. 

Arnold, Matthew, on Spinoza, 81; 
on fulfilment of Messianic prophecy 
in Jesus, 359. 

Authority in religion, often mis- 
placed, 493; Christ the supreme 


authority, 493ff.; Christ and 
other masters, 494ff.; reason, 
497 ; Church, 5033; Scripture, 


506; sphere of Christ’s authority, 
513. : 


wap matter, a double-faced entity, 


Baldensperger, on Messianic con- 
sciousness of Jesus, 365. 

Barrow (author of Hvangelium 
Regni), Christ’s grace in Fourth 
Gospel confined to the disciples, 483. 

Baur, Dr. F. C., Christ’s indebted- 
ness to Greek philosophy, 165; 
Jesus claimed to be Christ, 360 ; 
sources of Christianity, 362 ; origin 
of Christianity, 414, 415; Paul’s 
conversion, 417 ; primitive Chris- 
tianity, 481; views of, compared 
with Pfleiderer’s, 434 ; on Synopti- 
cal Gospels, 451 ; non-historicity of 
Fourth Gospel, 474. 

Bax, the religion of Socialism, 118 ; 
the ethics of, 114. 

Baxter, Richard, on fundamentals, 
301. 

Bible, the raison d’étre of, 32; the 
record of revelation, 300; in what 
sense a rule of faith, 325; false 
ideas of its authority, 493; true 
conception, 506 ff.; danger of 
wrong use of, 509; books of, not 
all of equal value, 510; Christ’s 
own teaching determines value of 
both Testaments, 511. 

Bornemann, on right to express our 
idea of Christ’s person in our own 
language, 357; on Christ’s pre- 
existence, 407 ; religion not con- 
cerned to explain Christ’s person 
and work, 409. 

Buddhism, compared with Hebrew 
prophecy, 239; Oldenberg on, 
259; Buddha and Jesus, 378. 

Butler, Bishop, arguments for future 
life in Analogy, 60; sombre tone 
of Analogy, 125 ; record of revela- 
tion, how far necessary, 298, 


515 


516 


CatrD, Principal, on principle of 
causality, 150; proof of God’s ex- 
istence, 156. 

Caird, Prof. Edward, contrast between 
materialism and spiritualism, 110; 
on religion of Comte, 163. 

Canon, required in literature of reve- 
lation, 311; Reuss on, 311; the 
facts, 311; reflections, 313; or- 

anic conception of Scripture, 814 ; 
istory of Hebrew canon, 315 ; Dr. 
Hodge on, 315; Oehler on, 317; 


Ryle on, 312, 315, 319; test of 


canonicity, 319; canon of New 
Testament, 512; question import- 
ant, but not vital to faith, 513. 

Celsus, attack of, on Christianity, 

Cheyne, Canon, on Mosaism, 223; 
on Isa, xxxii. 2, 258; on Persian 
influence on Jewish religion, 287 ; 

_on Essenes, 292 ; on legal spirit in 
“Psalter, 336. 

Chinese, the, not an elect people, 
200 ; Book of Odes, 243. 

Christianity, independent of history, 
850; forms of, 351; Paul not 
author of, 416; Paul’s idea of, 
421; recent theories as to primi- 
tive Christianity, 430; Paul 
author of, according to Pfleiderer, 
435 ; the absolute religion, 514. 

Chronicles, books of, date of, 279; 
characteristics, 281; Philo-Leviti- 
calism, 324, 331. 

Clement of Alexandria, John’s Gospel 
the spiritual Gospel, 489. 

Clifford, Professor, ‘‘ mind-stuff,” 98. 

Clifford, Dr., on the inspiration and 
authority of the Bible, 511. 

Cobbe, Miss, difference between 
Deism and Theism, 132; on prayer, 
189, 144; on personality of God, 
1443 on the new revelation, 145. 

Confucius, called himself a trans- 
mitter, 268, 

Covenant, of works, 249; new cove- 
nant, 247-249, 

Creation, of the world, 65; is matter 
eternal? 65; Pantheistic idea of, 
73 ; criticism of, 85-87. ~ 

Criticism, modern, of Old Testament, 
164-175; apologetic attitude to- 
wards, 171; variations of, 171; 
extreme views, 172; New Testa- 
ment verdicts on Leviticalism not 
altered by, 275. 


GENERAL INDEX, 


DALE, Dr., on the Living Christ and 
the Gospels, 353. 


Daniel, book of, belongs to Macca- 


bean period, 291; of Apocalyptia 
type, 291; traces of national self- 
consciousness in, 334. | 

Darmesteter, on Havet’s critical 
views, 172, 197; on Jeremiah, 
254; on Perstan dualism, 284, 

Darwin on morals, 112; confession 
of religious atrophy, 162, 


David becomes an ideal of kinghood 


252. 

Death of Jesus, foreseen by Him, 380; 
meaning of, 381. 

Decalogue, dates from Moses, 209 ; 
proof, 209 ff.; universal character, 
213; preface, import of, 212 ; ori- 
ginal form of, 216; no ritual in 
it, 217 ; compared with Egyptian 
ritual of the dead, 217. 


Deism, sketch of, 16; Deistic theory 


of the universe, 115; optimistic, 
117; Pelagian idea of human 
nature, 119; view of future life, 
120; use of design argument, 124, 


Delitzsch, definition of apologetic, 


35; apologetic method, 41; on 
Deism and Theism, 135. 

Driver, Canon, on the documents of 
Pentateuch, 166; on the Deca- 
logue, 218 ; on Esther, 335. 

Duhm, idea of election in prophets, 
192; Hosea first to condemn image- 
worship, 230; contrast between 
Amos and Hosea, 234; on Ezekiel, 
254. 


Ecc.EstaTE8, book of, idea of God 
in, 287 ; belongs to night of legal- 
ism, 291; use of, in canon, 328; 
pessimistic, 328. 

Egypt, Israel in, 196, 212; ritual of 
the dead, 217; religious war be- 
tween, and Israel, 225, 

Eibach, on the preference for parti- 
cular books of Scripture, 511. 

Election of Israel, 192 ff. ; elect for 
world’s sake, 200 ; creates an apolo- 
getic problem, 201; bearing on 
heathenism, 204; modern apolo- 
gists on, 202. 

Elijah, his task, 227; idea of God, 
228 ; did he countenance worship 
of Jehovah by images ? 229, 

Esther, book of, belongs to night of 
legalism, 291; on the borders of 


GENERAL INDEX, 


the canonical, 291; was it in 
canon of Josephus? 319. 

Eusebius, statements of Papias con- 
cerning the Gospels by Matthew 
and Mark, preserved by, 448; 
Clement’s statement about John’s 
Gospel, 489. 

Ewald, H., on heathenism, 206; 
original form of Decalogue, 216 ; 
religious war between Israel and 
Egypt, 225; on Isa. ix. 6, 259; 
date of Chronicles, 279; its pur- 
pose, 279. 

Ewald, Paul, the main problem in 
the question about the Gospels, 
468. 

Exile, Babylonian, 265 ; literary ac- 
tivity of exiles, 265. 

Ezekiel, the prophet, priests and 
Levites in, 169; his ideal, 254; 
link between Prophetism and Juda- 
ism, 264; last eight chapters, 264. 

Ezra, the scribe, 268 ; his work, 268. 

Ezra and Nehemiah, books of, origin- 
ally one with Chronicles, 279. 


FAIRBAIRN, Principal (Oxford), ‘‘ de- 
velopmental coincidences,’ 285 ; 
on Renan’s theory of resurrection 
of Jesus, 388. 

Fall, the, biblical account of, com- 
pared with scientific view of primi- 
tive man, 62. 

Farrar, Archdeacon, on Rabbinical 
system of interpretation, 296. 

Fichte, denied personality of God, 


81. 

Fiske, John, prolonged infancy as a 
civilising agent, 104; God un- 
knowable, 148; evolutionary 
theory exalts man, 159. 

Flint, on the cosmological argument, 
150; the teleological argument, 
154, 160. 


GENESIS, critical views on, 166. 

Gloag, Dr., character of Fourth Gos- 
pel as compared with Synoptists, 
490. 

Gore, C., on the need to go back to 
the historic Jesus, 850; use of 
oratio directa influences the re- 
ports of Christ’s teaching in Fourth 
Gospel, 476 ; nature of all legiti- 
mate authority, 500. 

Gospels, Synoptical, sources for Chris- 
tian facts, 46; primé facie his- 


517 


torical, 343; compared with Paul’s 
Epistles, 344; miracles in, 375; 
historicity examined, 448 ff. ; did 
they use the ideal method # 459. 

Gospel of John, different from Synop- 
tical Gospels, 343; the hardest 
apologetic problem, 466; the main 
question, 467; the Logos doctrine 
no part of Christ’s teaching, 469 ; 
external evidence cannot settle the 
question, 471; is the ideal method 
resorted to? 474; free reporting of 
sayings, 475; how to be accounted 
for, 476; the Holy Spirit Christ’s 
alter ego, what this involves, 
481; the fulness of Christ’s grace 
asserted but not shown, 482; lead- 
ing aim of, to show divine majesty 
of the Logos, 484; different from 
Synoptists in didactic scope, 487 ; 
the second lesson- book of evan- 
gelicknowledge, 488; Logostheorem 
not key to the gospel, 490; Johan- 
nine authorship credible, 491. 

Greece, gods of, at different periods, 
230; tragic poets compared with 
Hebrew prophets, 243, 245. 

Green, Professor T. H., import of 
Hegelianism, 78; the universal 
consciousness, 156; philosophical 
Christianity, 353; on Christian 
dogma, 855; on aversion to dogma, 
399. 

Greg, W. R., divine personality, 
143 ; Providence, 144; the future 
life, 144; utility of prayer, 144; 
on the function of revelation, 501. 

HABAKKUK the prophet, perplexities 
of, 241. 

Halcombe, John’s first 
written, 488. 

Harnack, ‘sovereign handling” of 
history ascribed to author of Fourth 
Gospel, 473; Logos idea of Fourth 
Gospel not of the Alexandrian 
type, 491. 

Harrison (Problems of Christianity 
and Scepticism), on temper of 
apologist, 39; lost Christ in the 
Bible, 509. 

Hartmann, concrete and abstract 
monism distinguished, 87 ; eulogy 
of Bernard Weiss’ account of primi- 
tive Christianity, 437. 

Havet, Ernest, views on Old Testa- 
ment criticism, 172; late date of 


Gospel 


518 


the prophets, 172; Darmesteter on, 
172; denies the call of the twelve, 
379. 

Heathenism, character of, 205; 
Ewald on, 206; contrasted with 
religion of Israel, 237 ; compared 
with Judaism, 265. 

Hebrews, Epistle to, an apologetic 
writing, 2; views of critics on, 
448; relation to Paul, 444; pro- 
logue, 470; writer not an apostle, 
470; canonicity independent of 
authorship, 512. 

Hegel, views of, compared with 
Spinoza’s, 78; on the teleological 
argument, 151. 

Hellenism, Greek influence on Israel, 
289, 892; the Septuagint, 293; 
Hellenistic elements in Paul’s 
Epistles, 436. 

Helvetius, argued in favour of liber- 
tinage, 101. 

Herrmann, Professor, representative 
ef Ritschl school, 155; God known 
only through Jesus, 155, 502; 
knowledge of the historical Christ 
indispensable, 855; faith in divin- 
ity of Jesus, how reached, 405. 

Holtzmann, H. J., advocates an 
Urmarkus, 449. 

Holtzmann, Oscar, criticism of teach- 
ing of Fourth Gospel, 483; Logos 
idea in Fourth Gospel only a Hil/s- 
vorstellung, 491, 

Hosea, the prophet, on idols, 177 ; 
Israel an elect people, 193; reli- 
gious element most prominent in, 
234; God’s grace in, 251. 

Hume, on suicide, 101. 

Huxley, on origin of life, 95; men 
automata, 99; on the Gospels, 342. 


ILLUMINISM, or free thought in Ger- 
many, 22 ff. 

Immanence, Deism and Theism in 
relation to, 134; Delitzsch on, 135; 
Theodore Parker on, 137; Mar- 
tineau, 141. 

Inspiration, prophetic, 190; how 
affected by criticism, 309; com- 
patible with crude morality,°309 ; 
@ priori views of, 310. 

Isaiah, the prophet, on idols, 177; 
the Holy One of Israel, 183; Zion 
inviolable, 185; mountain of the 
Lord’s house, 188; Universalism, 
189; idea of election, 193; two 


GENERAL INDEX. 


Isaiahs, 243; ideal king, 252; 

political optimism, 253; chief 

sou of Christ’s Messianic idea, 
3. 

Israel, stages in her religion, 170 ; 
her vocation, 192; an elect people, 
192 ff.; prophetic references to 
early history of, 195; chosen for 
good of the world, 200; geograph- 
ical position, 200. 


J. AonPh science and the belief in God, 
1 


Jeremiah, the prophet, on idols, 177 ; 
God universal Ruler, 178 ; God the 
Creator, 180; Zion not inviolable, 
187 ; perplexities of, 241; oracle 
of new covenant, 247 ; ethical op- 
timism of, 253. 

Jesus, apology of, for loving sinners, 
5 fi.; His teaching, 49-53; con- 
flict with Pharisaism, 55; view of 
sin, 57; welcome for His own 
sake, 837; way of dealing with 
inquirers, 339 ; can He be known # 
842; new type of goodness, 346 ; 
the Christ, 356; sources of His 
Messianic idea, 863; Martineau’s 
objection answered, 364; founder 
of the kingdom, 369; methods, 
874; miracles, 374 ; wisdom, 379 ; 
meaning of His death, 381 ; resur- 
rection, 383; Lord, 398 ; sources 
of faith in His Lordship, 400; Jesus 
and Paul, 488; supreme authority 
in religion, 492 ff.; His yoke easy, 
500; sphere of His authority, 


513. 

Job, book of, date, 241; canonicity, 
$20 ; raison d'étre, 328. 

Jonah, book of, ssnonicl ee $21. 

Jones, Professor Henry, Materialism 
and Idealism, 110; ideal without 
the power within, 249, 

Josephus, his Hebrew canon, 318. 

Judaism, compared with Mosaism, 
261; prominence of ritual in, 262 ; 
a step onwards ? 264 ; difference be- 
tween and heathenism, 265. 


Kartan, on teleological argument, 
155. 

Kant, on human depravity, 128 ; on 
principle of causality, 150; on 
teleological argument, 151 ; on on- 
tological argument, 153. 

Keim, on gospel miracles, 875; om 


GENERAL INDEX. 


resurrection of Jesus, 3890; criti- 
cism of vision theory, 390; ‘‘tele- 
gram” theory, 391. 

Kethubim, third division of Hebrew 
canon, 170, 815; region of Old 
Testament antilegomena, 316. 

Kingdom of God, Christ’s idea of, 
3; attributes of, 870-3873; Jesus 
founder of, 369. 

Kuenen, Moses author of Decalogue, 

170; apocalyptic literature, 293. 


LANGE, historian of Materialism, 93 ; 
on mental phenomena, 99 ; basis 
of morals, 108 ; worship of ideals, 
105, 114; atoms without quali- 
ties, 109. 

Laws in Pentateuch, strata of legisla- 
tion, 167. 

Le Conte, Professor, evolution and 
Theism, 92 ; of mind out of matter, 
108 ; on immortality of man, 159 ; 
evolution and the ideal man, 412. 

Legalism, night of legalism, 278 ff. 

Lessing, writings and opinions of, 
2 


Life, origin of, Christian view, 67, 
107 ; Materialistic view, 94; Du 
Bois Reymond and Huxley on, 
95. 

Lightfoot, Bishop, on authorship of 
Fourth Gospel, 472. 

Lipsius, personality of God, 82; 
Theistic arguments, 158. 

Lotze, defence of personality of God, 
83; criticism of Materialism, 106- 
108 ; teleological argument, 153; 
possibility of miracle, 411. 

Luke, Gospel of, preface reveals pur- 
pose to write history, 456; ‘‘Hymn 
of Victory,” 454 ; story of woman 

_ in Simon’s house, 464. 


MaccaBavs, Judas, 290. 
Maccabees, second book of, on Nehe- 
miah’s collection of books, 281. 
Mark, Gospel of, Papias on, 448 ; 
views of critics on, 449. 
Marshall, Professor, on variations in 
 evangelic reports, 459. 
Martineau, on Materialism, 110 ; im- 
“manence, 141; the inner light, 
145; design argument, 154; reli- 
ion of humanity, 168; on gospel 
istory, 843; Jesus not Christ, 
864; New Testament interpreta- 
tion of prophecy, 369; did not 


519 


teach Universalism, 871; view of 
resurrection, 894; Jesus not per- 
fect, 410; reason the seat of autho- 
rity in religion, 498,. 502. 

Bees Dr. G., is matter eternal ? 
65. 

Matthew, Gospel of, Papias on, 448 ; 
modern critics on, 449; the gra- 
cious invitation, 458; the great 
commission, 462. 

Ménégoz, Paul’s view of resurrection 
of Jesus, 396 ; Paul not occupied 
with question of Christ’s birth, 408. 

Micah, the prophet, on idols, 177 ; 
God universal Lord, 178 ; moun- 
tain of Lord’s house, 188 ; Israel an 
elect people, 193 ; on God’s grace, 
250. 

Mill, J. S., essay on Nature, 126 ; 
pessimism, 126; argument from 
design, 151. 

Miracles in Gospels, 48, 874; apolo- 
getic value of, 376 ; nature miracles, 
377; permanent significance of, 
378; possibility of, 411; miracles 
in Fourth Gospel, 484. 

Moore, A. L., faith to be defended 
on presuppositions, 59; Darwin’s 
confession of religious atrophy, 162. 

Morality, crude, Fistinguished from 
immorality, 309. 

Mosaism, relation to Judaism, 262, 

Moses, author of Decalogue, 209; 
relation to ritual, 218 ; a prophet, 
219 ; absence of reference to future 
life, 224 ; put morality first, 237. 


NEHEMIAH, prayers of, 262, 
Nehemiah, book of, vide Ezra, 


Optimism, Christian, 70; Deistic, 
117 ; prophetic, 245 ff.; source of 
prophetic, 247; forms of, 251; 
value of, 256. 

Origen, reply to Celsus, 9-16, 

Owen, Dr., on fundamentals, 301. 


PALINGENESIS, Christian hope of, 
67 ; scope of Christian hope, 68. 
Pantheism, relation to Polytheism, 

15. 
Papias, notices of Matthew and Mark, 
44 ; 


8. 

Parker, Theodore, difference between 
Deism and Theism, 183; attitude 
towards Pantheism, 136; provi- 
dence, 143; the future life, 144. 


520 


GENERAL INDEX, 


~~ 


‘Paul, the Apostle, Jesus Lord, 402 ; Psalter, date of, 170, 208, 241; wait- 


resurrection of Jesus, 402; God- 
head of Jesus, 406 ; pre-existence, 
407 ; sinlessness, 407; virgin birth? 
408; conversion, 421; Christ’s 
atoning ‘death, 424; his limits, 
426 ; Rabbinical modes of thought, 
425 ; views of modern critics, 431 ; 
mystic side of his theology, 442. 

Paulinism, Deutero-, name given to 
certain books of the New Testa- 
ment, 444, 451. 

Pentateuch, the, modern criticism 
on, 167. 

Persia, ancient, religion of, 243; 
degenerated into ritualism, 265 ; 
idea of God, 283; involuntary 
dualism, 283; did Jews borrow 
from? 285; views of Cheyne, 287. 

Personality of God, essential to Chris- 
tian theory of the universe, 59, 81 ; 
Pantheism denies, 80; Lotze on, 
83. 

Pfleiderer, resurrection of Jesus, 404 ; 
Paul real author of Christianity, 
416; source of Paul’s theology, 
425 ; primitive Christianity, 434 ; 
his view compared with Baur’s, 435 ; 
Universalism in Christ’s teaching, 
438 ; on Synoptical Gospels, 447 ; 
compared with Baur’s views, 451 ; 
**Hymn of Victory,” 454; gra- 
cious invitation, 458. 

Pharisees, origin of, 288. 

Philo, in thought, Jew in form, Greek 
in spirit, 295; affinity with Scribes, 
295 ; allegorical interpretation, 295. 

Prophecy, Messianic, 245 ff.; what in 
strictness, 256; Messianic ideals, 
260 ; met in Jesus, 261 ; Messianic 
hope in period of the Scribes, 293. 

Prophetism, relation to Mosaism, 
231; passion for righteousness, 
238 ; relation to ritual, 234 ; apolo- 
getic value of, 242 ; similar pheno- 
mena in other nations, 242; 
optimism of, 245 ff. 

Prophets, Hebrew, monotheists, 176, 
182; Individualism, 187; Uni- 
versalism, 188 ; origin of prophetic 
religion, 190; view of Israel's 
vocation, 192; reference to early 
history of Israel in, 195 ; reaffirm 
ancient faith, 231. 

Protestantism, neglect of Synoptical 
Gospels by, 345, 510; preference 
for Paul (Renan), 429. 


ing on God, 240 ; problems of indi- 
vidual life, 241 ; value of, if late in 
origin, 272; dark side, 274; Cheyne 
on, 287; religious defects of, 334. 


Reimakvs, Wolfenbiittel Fragments, 
25; on the future life, 121, 131; 
resurrection of Jesus, 385. 

Religion of Israel, sources for, 165 ; 
modern views on, 167 ; three stages, 
170; defects, 321. 

Renan, on Decalogue, 217; denies 
Persian influence on Jews, 288; 
theory as to resurrection of Jesus, 
887; Paul’s conversion, 417; de- 
preciates Paul, 429. 

Resurrection of Jesus, theories to 
explain away, 385 ff.; helped to 
make Jesus Lord, 402; Pfleiderer 
on, 404. 

Reuss, on canon, 811; origin of Fourth 
Gospel, 467 ; character of its narra- 
tives, 473; order in which Gospels 
must be studied, 488, 490, 

Revelation, Deistic views of, 17; 
Lessing’s, 22; Spinoza’s views on, 
32; valuable as a protest against 
@ scholastic conception of, 32; true 
conception of, 32, 501; not synon- 
ymous with the Bible, 298; God 
reveals Himself in history, 298; 
idea of, in scholastic Protestantism, 
300. 

Reymond, Du Bois, origin of life only 
a difficult mechanical problem, 95. 

Riehm, views as to the law, 171; 
Sabbath law, 221; ritual codes, 
221; Alexandrian Judaism and 
prophecy, 280; night of legalism, 
297; Messianic prophecy, 323. 

Ritschlianism, characteristics, 155 ; 
averse to dogma, 399. 

Robertson, Professor, on texts in 
Amos, 179; on Mosaic idea of 
God, 222; on origin of ritual laws, 
222; on Elijah, 229; on indirect 
speech in Hebrew language, 476. 

Rousseau, Hmile, 27; on prayer, 28, 
118, 139 ; attitude towards Christ, 
29; on moral evil, 125. 

Royce, doubt proves a God, 158. 

Ruth, book of, canonicity of, 321. 

Ryle, Professor, literary activity of 
the exiles, 265; on the Hebrew 
canon, 812, 3153; on canon of 
Josephus, 319. 


GENERAL INDEX. 


SARATIER, on Paul’s earlier mode of 
thought, 425. 

Sadducees, origin of, 288. 

Samuel, services to Israel, 227. 

Sanday, Professor, external evidence 
as to authorship of John’s Gospel, 
470; on indirect Johannine author- 
ship, 471; on free reporting of 
Christ's words in the Fourth Gospel, 
475, 476, 479. 

Sayce, Professor, on antiquity of 
writing, 216. 

Schelling, relation of his philosophy 
to Spinoza, 79 

Schleiermacher, on sin and physical 
evil, 63 ; matter eternal, 65; view 
of resurrection of Jesus, 386; on 
virgin birth, 409; on the synop- 
tical Christ compared with that of 
Fourth Gospel, 489. 

Schneckenburger, Acts of Aposiles 
an apologetic writing, 445. 

Schopenhauer, his pessimism, 127. 

Schultz, on Decalogue, 215; antiquity 
of ritual, 220; on books of Chron- 
icles, 382; on Jonah and Ruth, 
833; defects of Old Testament, 334, 
336. 

Schiirer, Messianic hope in period of 
the Scribes, 292. 

Scribism, began with Ezra, 263 ; 
functions of, 281; results, 283; 
interpretation of the law, 295; 
Farrar on, 296. 

Scriptures, Hebrew effect of criticism 
on, 805; inspiration how affected 
by criticism, 309; traces of religious 
defects in, 326 ; Christian view of 
these, 836; Christ’s estimate of, 
507; high yet discriminating, 508. 

Scriptures, New Testament, their 
value, 511; canon of, 513. 

Septuagint, story of, 293; traces of 
Greek influence in, 294. 

Sin, in Christian theory of the uni- 
verse, 60-62; relation of moral to 
physical evil, 63 ; in Judaism, 268. 

Sinlessness of Jesus, concurrent cause 
of worship of Him as Lord, 400. 

Smith, Professor G. A., on Isa. 
xxxii. 2, 258; Isaiah in Gospels, 

863. 

Smith, Professor W. R., on Isaiah's 
ministry, 186; on Isa. ix. 6, 
259; Levitical ritual not God’s 
word by Moses, 263 ; on Old Testa- 
ment canon, 316, 


§21 


Socialism, tendency of, in morals, Bax 
on, 113, 114. 

Song of Solomon, canonicity of, 321. 

Spencer, Herbert, agnosticism de- 
fined, 147. 

Spinoza, Tractatus Theol.-Politicus, 
31 ; Hthica, 72 ; theory of universe, 
72 ff.; relation to Hegel's, 78; 
denied moral distinctions, 88. 

Stearns, argument from Christian 
experience, 354. 

Steck, theory as to Paul’s leading 
Epistles, 437. 

Strauss, on Reimarus, 23 ; denies per- 
sonality of God, 81; on Hegel- 
ianism, 86; on future life, 89; 
thought a mode of motion, 97 ; 
religious views, 104, 1143; on 
Schopenhauer, 127; on resurrec- 
tion of Jesus, 384 ff, 


TESTAMENT, New, apologetic ele- 
ments in, 1. 

Theistic arguments stated, 149 ff. 

Thoma, the Fourth Gospel a life of 
Jesus after the type of Philo’s Vita 
Mosis, 491. 

Thomson, D’Arcy, Sales Attici, 245. 

Thomson, J. E. H., on apocalyptic 
literature, 292, 

Transcendence, vide Immanence, 

Tibingen school, vide Baur. 


ULLMANN, the sinlessness of Jesus, 

Ulrici, brain necessary to conscious- 
ness, 109; on theory that crime 
arises from diseased brain, 111. 


VATEE, variation in his critical views, 
171; dialectic of history, 201; on 
Decalogue, 216 ; ritual non-Mosaic, 
222; ideality of God Mosaic, 
231. 

Vernes, Maurice, views on Old Testa- 
ment criticism, 172. 


Waiting on God in prophets and 
Psalms, 240. 

Watkins, Archdeacon, external evi- 
dence as to authorship of John’s 
Gospel, 470; translation the key 
ve revaete of Christ’s teaching in, 
475. 

Weiss, Dr. Bernhard, view of primi- 
tive Christianity, 432 ; Paul's con- 
version, 439; on first mission to 


§22 


- Gentiles, 440; on Matthew’s book 
of Logia, 449; on the great com- 
mission, 464, 

Weizsicker, view of primitive Chris- 
tianity, 433 ; secondary Johannine 
authorship of Fourth Gospel, 471 ; 

_ its narratives ideal, 473 ; its great 
value, 490; cannot be from John, 
492. 

Wellhausen, late origin of Decalogue, 
171, 214,,215; disputed texts in 

. Amos,-179; .0n Jewish cultus, 
263; prominence of sin in Judaism, 
268; origin of Pharisees and Sad- 

-ducees, 289.: 

Wendt, on Logos doctrine in Fourth 

Gospel, 473; partition theory, 
484; teaching of Fourth Gospel 


GENERAL INDEX. 


substantially same as in Synoptics. 

487 ; treatment of the Fatherhood 

of God unsatisfactory, 488; Jesus 

the supreme religious authority, 

510. 

Westcott, Bishop, on free report of 
Christ’s teaching in the Fourth 
Gospel, 475; on the New Testa- 
ment canon, 513. 

Wisdom of Sirach, on Greek transla- 
tions of Hebrew books, 294; on 
Hebrew books, 317. 

Wisdom of Solomon, influence of 
Greek philosophy traceable in, 
294; supposed source of the 
gracious invitation, 458. 


ZELLER on the Aufklarung, 117. 


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